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unrelated keywords in ads
Am I the only one frustrated by ebay allowing sellers to pack their ads full of unrelated keywords? The result is that despite my very narrowly targeted search strings, most of the items returned are unrelated. When I click on the item, the ad is filled with keywords that are not related to the item for sale, just to make their ad come up in any search executed. The result is that I can no longer find useful items on ebay. Facebook Marketplace is far more useful today.
1 comment
eburtonlab
Mentor11 months ago@joe_padavano8oc8
No, you are not the only one getting frustrated dealing with keyword spammers.
This seems to be a particular issue for automotive parts listings, where some sellers routinely cram laundry lists of keywords into the item-specifics to ensure that their items appear in as many searches as possible, regardless of the relevance.
An example of a spam keyword list in order details:
Until eBay cracks down on keyword spamming or at least limits the item-specifics fields, users have some options to deal with it and filter such listings from their search results.
If the problem is due to a handful of sellers in a particular category, it may be possible to simply exclude those sellers' item from search directly using the Seller section of the Advanced Search page. Up to ten sellers can be excluded that way, and the resulting search can be bookmarked or saved to act as a starting point for future searches to continue excluding those sellers' items.
For more general issues, some keyword spamming can be avoided by grouping keywords together with dashes or by putting phrases in quotes when searching. This ensures that only listing with certain words in a certain order with no words in between appear in the results. Since spam lists are just collections of words in a list, they are much less likely to qualify.
In automotive listings specifically, where some sellers simply reuse lists of every possible make, model and year, excluding a totally unrelated make, model or year may be enough to remove any listing with that keyword from the results.
If you are looking for suggestions and you have a particular search link which you are willing to share that seems to be beset by keyword spammers, someone may be able to provide some practical suggestions or even an alternative search link that might work better for you.