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Results missing when sorting by Lowest . Full results when searching by Highest.
Searched an item which had 15,000 results when sorted by Highest price first. Simply changing it from Highest to Lowest cuts it down to just 70??? Does it on Apple and Android platforms.
Why are the results being hidden?
Thank you.
15 comments
kh-stanley1
·1 year agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
midnightattic
·1 year agothis still in 2025 lol
a_c_green
·1 year agoYes, rather than disturb the existing code, they added a kind of patch to the process by calling those results "streamlined" and then offering to do the search again, correctly this time.
This has been in place for years now, and I suspect they really don't want to go in to fix the original problem for fear of breaking something else.
street-tek
·2 years agoSort by highest and choose last page for the true lowest ;¬)
a_c_green
·3 years agoThis was the subject of some discussion as recently as last month:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Talk-about-streamlining-results/td-p/33858790
My theory is that there's a coding error in the Sort By option for Lowest Price First in which the user's search results are being accidentally de-duplicated on some basis during the chronological sort. This de-dupe command is not in effect on any of the other options for sorting the results in any other order besides Lowest Price First. (The Sort By selection is not supposed to be eliminating any records from the search results. The Sort By options are simply supposed to order the results as chosen by the user.)
This topic has come up more than once, and in another recent thread (which I can't find at this moment; the Khoros search utility is not very good at indexing recent posts), one of the eBay contacts acknowledged the problem and said it had been referred someplace internally as a bug.
korytina
·2 years agoSame here searching for xt30 on 2023-10-12. Lowest price came in at $4. Workaround was doing a google search and linking from google to ebay, which found an item for $2. Surprisingly, the search after this found one for $1.24 + $0 ship. That's quite a price gouge!
eburtonlab
·2 years agoThe "Price plus shipping: lowest first" sort order provides filtered results -- often drastically filtered. And the option to "see more results" may not always be shown as it should. The filtering may vary depending on the keywords used.
If you encounter a drastically filtered result for a keyword search using a desktop browser, you should be able to use the "Feedback" link in the lower right corner of the search results to provide feedback on your search to eBay developers. The more users provide info, the more likely something is to be done about the over-filtration problem.
You can avoid that problem entirely by using a different sort order.
If you have few results, try sorting by "highest first", then starting at the end of the results, scroll up instead of down. This also avoids the problem of variation listings with low-cost variations appearing at the top of the lowest-first sort.
If you have a bookmarked or saved lowest-first search that you use a lot, you can avoid the filtration by adding the following to the end of the search URL, then saving the resulting search:
rfmtm
·3 years agoEbay has been doing this for some time now. Not only is it reducing the results, but worse the actual lowest cost item is not shown at all. Also the "show more results" option is often not available are well. So for some sellers that offer the best product at the best price get cheated right along with the buyer.
patch-it-up-buttercup
·3 years agoIt is still doing this August 2023 - 345 searches to 45 for the item I was searching (and no it does not have a button to show more items). Just left a note to Ebay comments.
somanypostcards
·3 years agoeBay's reality, if you get the message with the button to see more results, says they are streamlining results so you see the best listings. However the perception is that eBay is hiding most of the low priced items so that their fees will be higher as a higher priced item is likely to be purchased. Lately this "streamlining" has become so extreme as to make this sort useless if the button to See more results is missing. Example:
When I search collectibles postcards, eBay search returns 8,400,000 results for all the sorts except Price + Shipping: lowest first which returns 3,200 results, just 0.04 % of the postcard listings. At least I see the message:
eag1nyc
·3 years agoebay is quite obviously manipulating results to make customers buy more expensive. If sort by lowest price doesn't work youre forced to go for random articles. At least if you are unable
to go to "temu"straight away.......
main.street.books.plus
·2 years agoWhile I came here because I am having the same issue with being pushed down in the search when using "Lowest Price+" sort, I will add that a few of my items are/were being pushed down and they were in fact not the lowest priced.
I will say that I've been able to change the issue when slightly altering the title to be more in line with the other's that consistently appear above the "Results matching fewer words" of the sort. That's not what I prefer to do, but it's the only thing that has worked up until now.
somanypostcards
·3 years agoYes, I've reported this here before. All of the sorts except Lowest return all the results. Sort by Lowest returns just some of the results, sometimes less than 10% of the results, and many (often most) of the lowest priced items are NOT shown. Most of the time there's a button you can click to see all the lowest priced items. I personally think eBay should always show all the results on the first display and NEVER streamline the results so that many(often most) low priced listings are not shown.
eburtonlab
·3 years agoSorting by "Price plus Shipping: Lowest first" can often result in seeing a filtered version of the search results by default; typically that happens if the number of results is above a certain threshold (fifty results or so?). This approach was likely chosen by eBay since otherwise the results that would otherwise appear at the top of the sort may be items that are unlikely to be what the searcher is looking for in many cases.
For instance, a search for a widget sorted by price might put broken widgets, widget parts, widget accessories, books about widgets, widget plans, and t-shirts depicting widgets before any actual widgets are shown.
If you do want to see all results without filtering, there should be a link at the top of the page:
If you are using a saved or bookmarked search, unsave the old search, use the "See more results" link, then save the new search to bypass the extra step next time.
jameshen1
·3 years agoI have not noticed that myself, but I am on a computer and not a phone. But if that is truly happening to you, search by highest and then go the last few pages which will in fact be the lowest.