Search Results
Summary: La discusión titulada "Search Results" es bastante larga y parece involucrar a varios participantes como mtk4_22, mudshark61369, eburtonlab, y otros. Aunque no hay detalles específicos sobre el contenido de sus intercambios, se observa que hay múltiples respuestas en cadena que indican una conversación continua, posiblemente centrada en los resultados de búsqueda, dado el título sugerido. La participación activa y constante de autores como mtk4_22 y eburtonlab sugiere que se trata de un tema relevante para ellos. Sin embargo, no se proporciona información concreta sobre el desarrollo o conclusión del tema tratado.
It is so common for search results to be contrary to the entered search terms. I usually waste a lot of time manually filtering through the failed search results. To make matters worse, when I revisit the site, all of the items I've previously viewed and rejected appear for my consideration. I sometimes receive email messages about the items I've viewed and rejected. If anything should be retained from my visits, it should be the search terms and new items should be brought to my attention that are relevant. A person is less likely to visit a web site that is a waste of time. A better search engine and better business practices would improve the experience.
redlinear
·4 months ago@mtk4_22
You are correct.
Hidden away down under "results matching fewer words".
tobaccocardyahoo
·4 months agoThe goal of the search is to provide a buyer who is searching for a specific item results which will result in a purchase with the least effort required.
It is not to provide a buyer who is browsing the listings to see what is new.
It is not making it easy for a seller who is reviewing the competition for their own listings.
It is not a lot of things that some people use the search for that are unlikely to lead to a quick sale.
Every search costs Ebay resources and money. They do not make money unless a sale is made as a result of the search.
Many of the people who are frustrated by the search are expecting to find an old-fashion text based search that they can easily optimize results using. Such searches were relegated to backward websites after Amazon's A9 Search showed the techniques and value associated with sales promotion in the search results.
There are still thousands of sellers who spend all of their free time adding search terms to their listings which prove to be ineffective and distort the search results seen by buyers. They help bring the chaos of an Etsy search to other marketplaces.
fabrics24
·4 months agoThat sucks! I'm sorry to hear you're having a tough time with the search engine. 😞
Something that works for me is to put a dash before the words I want filtered out (ie: If wanted some jewelry and was okay with all colors but gold, I could put "-gold" in the search bar, and it'd only return things that don't have gold in the listing), but if you're already doing that, I can see how that'd be extremely frustrating.
eburtonlab
·4 months ago@mtk4_22
It is so common for search results to be contrary to the entered search terms.
Keep in mind that eBay considers listings with your search keywords (or close synonyms) in the item-specifics to be potential matches for your search, not just those with keywords in the title.
If you want only exact matches with no corrections or substitutions, try putting one of your search keywords in quotes. You can also try grouping keywords with dashes if you want those words to appear in order in all your search results. You can exclude keywords that you do not want to see in your search results by putting a minus sign in front of keywords to be excluded.
Once you have chosen appropriate keywords, search. From the search results page, you should see a category tree on the left side if you are using a desktop browser, showing all the categories where results appear. Select an individual category to limit your result to that category, or to see subcategories to limit your search even further.
When you have chosen a category, you will likely see additional category-specific filter options. Choose those to narrow your results further still.
Using keywords, category and filter options you should be able to limit your results and avoid the necessity of manually scrolling past lots of results you are not interested in.
If none of that helps, or if you want some more detailed suggestions, feel free to follow up with a search that is not working for you. Likely someone can provide some suggestions or even links to searches that gets closer to what you have in mind.
mtk4_22
OP4 months agoSounds like a lot of work. I've found better search engine results on other web sites. Maybe artificial intelligence is a factor.
eburtonlab
·4 months agoSounds like a lot of work.
It depends on how many results you are seeing and how much time you are spending combing through those results to find what you are looking for.
I find that spending a minute or two refining a search can often save many minutes of scrolling through, checking and discarding unrelated results, particularly if this is a search that I intend to save and use more than once.
mtk4_22
OP4 months agoSpecifically, a search for men's closed bottom jersey sweatpants size medium with pockets and internal drawstring in green would typically return open bottom, fleece, no pockets, external drawstring, sizes not including medium, and colors other than green. When I revisit the website, these irrelevant results are presented once again for review. The simple principle that selling something that someone doesn't want to buy is not good for business. Hope this enlightens people to the original premise for this post.
eburtonlab
·4 months agoSpecifically, a search for men's closed bottom jersey sweatpants size medium with pockets and internal drawstring in green would typically return open bottom, fleece, no pockets, external drawstring, sizes not including medium, and colors other than green.
And how are you searching for that, exactly? It sounds like you are searching for something very specific using keywords that many sellers may not be including.
A search for men's closed-bottom jersey sweatpants medium turns up three results. Is there another term for closed-bottom that might be more commonly used? Perhaps if you can find one specific version of what you are looking for, then search for others using the title keywords or SKU number from that listing.
There are filters for things like pockets and colors, but you will still likely have to scroll through some listings to distinguish between internal and external drawstrings, as most sellers do not appear to make that distinction.
The simple principle that selling something that someone doesn't want to buy is not good for business.
Every business sells things that some people do not want to buy. The trick is to allow buyers to find things they do want to buy. You may think that what you are looking for is obvious, but in a marketplace if sellers do not use the same terms to describe what they are selling, you may have a hard time actually finding it, on any site.
You can go wrong by being too specific in a search just as easily as being too general.
If your take all your keywords men's closed bottom jersey sweatpants medium pockets internal drawstring green there are no results with all those terms. When a search returns zero results, eBay often drops some keywords to be able to provide some partial results, but eBay may be just as likely to drop a critical keyword such as size as it is to drop a less-critical keyword such as internal. So make that decision yourself, instead of letting eBay do it for you.
Rather than let eBay decide which keywords are critical, you may have to pare down your search terms and drop those that most sellers may not think to include. Perhaps instead of searching for jersey, try excluding fleece. You may still be able to find what you are looking for if you widen your search a bit, but not so much that you wind up including results in the wrong size that obviously are not suitable.
In practice, it is much quicker and easier to perform a search, examine the results to see if the search is returning what you want, and then refine the search a few times -- compared to describing the process in detail. And often if a search returns some results that are not quite what you want, that may be OK as long as you can spot some results that are what you want.
This might be a search you wind up with:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/260956/i.html?_nkw=sweatpants+medium+drawstring+green+-fleece&_fsrp=1&Size%2520Type=Regular&Size=M&Features=Pockets&_dcat=260956&_sop=10
Not all the results are exactly what you are looking for -- perhaps none are -- but it should be much easier to go through these results and quickly eliminate the ones that are unsuitable, compared to going through a much wider search that contains lots of results in the wrong size, for instance.
mtk4_22
OP4 months agoThe addage that the customer is always right is always applicable. If a seller is unable to provide an item the customer wants to buy, even if the search engine is incapable, the seller still loses. If there is too much time and effort utilized in a failed search, it is likely the buyer will go elsewhere. It seems that better selling practices (i.e. better search engine) rather than buying practices would better serve the sellers.
eburtonlab
·4 months agothe customer is always right
Even the ones that can't manage to buy a pair of pants?
hardrhymer76
·4 months agoNo, it isn't. At least not yet. The eBay search engine runs on a complex algorithm named "Cassini".
mtk4_22
OP4 months agoThe intent was that maybe AI would be an improvement.
mudshark61369
·4 months ago@mtk4_22,ca
"It is so common for search results to be contrary to the entered search terms".
Without an example of your searches and the category, we can't offer suggestions on how to get more relevant results.
" If anything should be retained from my visits, it should be the search terms and new items should be brought to my attention that are relevant".
Above the first results on every search page you will see;
If you click on it the heart, it will save your search and you will be notified when new listings for the items are posted.
"I sometimes receive email messages about the items I've viewed and rejected".
If you open a listing, then click on the sponsored listing photos in it, that generates receiving offers for the items. Sellers pay a fee for the increased search visibility so you cannot turn off those offer messages. You do not need to respond to them, so just ignore or delete them.
mtk4_22
OP4 months agoMuch like the sponsored listings, I can also ignore or delete comments, especially those without acknowledgement to the facts that prompted the conversation. Results contrary to search terms means items not relevant to given description. When "Save this search" is never selected, apparently notification of new listings should not occur, yet it does. Given the response, the search engine isn't exclusively generating irrelevant results.
kibble-net
·4 months agoThat's a strange way to say "thank you for taking time out of your morning to try and solve my problem".
mtk4_22
OP4 months agoUnderstanding the problem would be the essential first step.