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Why does an eBay search now show results not asked for mixed in with the results that are asked for? I understand the inclusion of “close†things at the end, but now I have to wade through many things I don’t want to see to occasionally spot the things I do want to see
3 comments
eburtonlab
Mentor2 years agoWhat are you searching for?
When you search using keywords, eBay considers any listing with the same keywords anywhere in the title or item-specifics to be a potential match.
In addition, eBay may also match similar keywords, or even autocorrect your keyword spelling, or substitute similar keywords.
If you do not want any keyword substitutions or corrections, you can try putting one of your search keywords in quotes to force eBay to return only exact, literal matches, but eBay will still provide results that contain your keywords in the item-specifics even if the words do not appear in the title itself.
Grouping keywords together using dashes will ensure that eBay only considers results where those words are in that order with no intervening words.
Using exclusion terms by putting a minus sign in front of keywords you want to avoid may also be useful for narrowing down your search, though using an exclusion term may also have other effects such as avoiding any keyword substitutions preventing automatic category navigation, so you may have to manually specify a category after searching with an exclusion, or when using quoted keywords.
anteater84
OP2 years agoAh, ok. That may explain some (most?) of it. Sometimes the items I’m searching for contain dashes. But other times they don’t, for example searching for the toy train locomotive “Lionel 2356†(no quotes in the actual search) will return a series of results, where actual Lionel 2356s are mixed in with other locomotives, with no discernible order
eburtonlab
Mentor2 years agoeBay's search does not actually distinguish between most punctuation marks, and most like dashes, periods and underscores are treated as equivalent to each other or to a single space in an item title. The one exception is when a dash or a minus sign is used in front of a keyword to signal an excluded keyword in a search.
A general search for Lionel 2356 will be steered into the Locomotive category, like this:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=Lionel+2356&_sacat=0&_sop=10
I see about 28 results that ship to my location using most sort orders other than "Best Match" or "Price + Shipping: lowest first". The former sort order lately tends to expand the search and show more unrelated items via keyword substitution, while the latter search often filters results -- sometimes drastically so.
If you scroll through your search results, at some point you reach the end, and then eBay may tack on a few "results matching fewer words", which, if you are scrolling quickly, may be mistaken for formal matching results since the division is easy to miss.
Expanding the search to the entire Railroad category finds a few extra results, mostly parts and accessories, and one expensive complete set.
Several apparent non-2356 results, including some pliers, actually contain the number 2356 in the item-specifics under the MPN specific. Those sellers may have used the "sell similar" feature from a 2356 listing to create those listings, and neglected to erase the details.
Some alternative searches that may find some listings, but not others:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=Lionel-2356&_sacat=262303&_sop=10
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=Lionel+%222356%22&_sacat=262303&_sop=10