Search Filters---How important are they?
I have never seen actual ebay data on this (if anyone knows of any, I'd love to hear about it), but I just came across data from a competing site that is quite similar to ebay...and makes me wonder if the data is also similar. A third party firm used the site's API to compile date from a sample of 100,000 searchers. (Again, I want to stress that these are NOT ebay numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are actually pretty similar):
Search: 97% used basic keyword search. 11% (yeah, I'm assuming some overlap?) used Category search.
"Sort" (as opposed to the default, which on ebay is Best Match): Only 4% used the "Sort" function. (which here is by price, ending soonest etc)
Searching: only 24% made it past page 1 of search results.
10% made it to page 3.
2% made it to page 10.
Filters (not including category filters, etc...just the 6 most popular were studied):
2.9% filtered by "personalization"
0.8% by free shipping
0.7% by price
0.3% by "star sellers" (here, that would be TRS sellers)
0.2% by items on sale
To repeat: This was another site, and it was an independent third party analysis, not stats from the site itself.
But assuming the numbers are similar to ebay's numbers, it seems pretty clear that most buyers use the default settings (keyword search, Best Match and few if any filters)---which, I admit, is what I've always guessed. (As I recall, years ago ebay did disclose the percentage of buyers here using Best Match, and it was in the 90+% range)
I've sometimes considered using Free Shipping for some items, figuring it helps me with people who filter by Free Shipping. But--IF these numbers are close to ebay's numbers---I'd say that would be a wasted effort.
Thoughts?
redlinear
·3 years agoI believe that to be relatively accurate.
I don't think Free Shipping helps them to find you. I think it helps after they find you.
isaiah53-57
·3 years agoI agree - wasted effort - And its too bad since I have about 10 years of my most valuable, highly coveted sneakers, action figures, comic books, sports cards, lego sets, Pokemon cards, stamps, fishing gear, etc, etc that I would like to start moving - I have always used ebay and have not branched out much to other venues - I just quit selling here when they tick me off and this is round 3 and quite possibly the final round if they don't do something dramatic to fix EVERYTHING.
Not only has the search become a bust, but the cost to sell here is outrageous, already pushing 20% of your selling price while they simultaneously attempt to make "promoted listings" a necessity.
With my margins and my high demand items, (which would eventually get search hits even without promoting), I could continue selling with a frown, but I absolutely refuse to continue selling here due to their Money Back Guarantee. The idea that ANY SALE YOU MAKE could turn bad and you are simply s#!+ out of luck is utter lunacy - Who came up with this mandate? With the money they are raking in per sale, I believe that guarantee should be on ebay if they want to try to attract new buyers with a money back guarantee - If it was, I would offer a guarantee of my own - that they would make a mad attempt at clearing the site of fraudsters and scammers right quick.
I just cant believe it when I see people posting on this board that they just lost a $500, $1000, $2000, $7000 item on here... Do they not know that they have virtually no recourse? From experience, I believe the fraud level here is nearing an out of control state - I dont know that for sure, but I do know that everyday single day more bad actors become aware that ANYTHING is for the taking here...
retro_entertainment_collectibles
·3 years agoFree shipping? Think most buyers these days realize they'll be paying for it somewhere or another.
In as far the 14-20% fee's I can tell you having been part in a brick and mortar game store we've have been absolutely thrilled beyond human consciousness to rake in 80% and we carried current as well as retro games back to Atari 2600 and not garbage either. Try more like 60-65% by time all said and done.
Money back guarantee? Easy, don't accept charge cards. Problem solved. Other than that every customer on the planet has a money back guarantee in online orders. They simply need know what to say. The chargeback will always side on the consumer and cost the merchant a minimum of $50 atop the loss. I'd a merchant account for near 10 years, in mail order when chargeback take place? Well, I can't recall one instance where we EVER got the product shipped back, not one. Card processor says what happens, not the consumer, not the merchant and get to pay out $50 minimum for the priviledge of aggregate processor making the decision, not you're bank, not their bank, not you're merchant account provider, none of them. You can dispute the chargeback, $25 every time the he said/she said goes to and fro.
As to fraud, well I could tell you some stories such as the time we'd a fella order day after day on our online store. Literally, hundreds of dollars a day of games and everytime cards went through. So we call our merchant account folks, they tell us "Do what you want." You can ship (got two working days do so, no exceptions) or refund the charges... Oh by the way, don't get the 2.5% commission back when refunding and oh, by the way, the refunds have a fee associated to. All stolen credit cards, literally nobody cared. If we'd shipped the stuff be out the stuff, be out the money, be out the fee's of card processing... Have ANY IDEA how difficult it is to prevent against online purchasing fraud? Ask the FTC, 8.8 BILLION of it in 2022.
eBay may mistakes just like any business does but blaming eBay for things completely out of their control just makes no sense. You want change, then start at the root of problems being banks and every entity in the path of card processing makes money coming or going. That'd be a good start. Remove consumers ability or LIMIT it when making claims against merchants ok, good with that. Or... eBay could require sellers get their merchant accounts and believe you me, 50%+ of the sellers loose them in less than a year.
We sold Pokemon cards in our store, magic the gathering and more... Again if we could get an 80% return that'd been amazing! We paid $1400 a month in rent for a little storefront before even figuring utlilities, snow plowing, store fixtures, costs of card processing and equipment on and on. 80% is DREAMY!
partfinds
·3 years agoEbay broke sorting so bad that you are right most stopped using it. I did. Sometimes i use high to low and jump to the middle or so.
using filters is broken and removes most of the listings.
You can experiment to actually see what is happening. Try searching for some gadget like airpods 3rd gen etc
anasazirose
·3 years agoWell, best match is never best match, buyers should realize this when a search for 'paw paw seeds' brings up canteloupe seeds as the 3rd item on the 1st page. It's obvious ebay cares about the buyer when they have a problem with a seller, but when they're being paid more money to throw sponsored canteloupe seeds into a search for paw paw seeds, then they care about money, because that is in NO WAY a best match. But hey, in the words of Jamie Iannone - CEO, "we constantly look at take rate as a way to say, what's an opportunity to lean in or to grab more take rate."
LOL, I should never have read that conference call transcript.
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@anasazirose Well, keep in mind that sellers can purposely manipulate search as well. That said, I just did a default BM search for Paw Paw seed & got no cantaloupes. In fact, my entire first page is either paw paw seeds or a 3 others that have "paw" in the title. Not saying it's never happened, we've all seen weird results before.
Thank you for the education as well, I've never heard of a "paw paw".
anasazirose
·3 years agoWell, the canteloupe are gone, but tobacco is 2nd. I wonder how ebay does that? I mean, give me canteloupe and tobacco and not you?
If you can find one to taste, do it! September is when they're ripe in PA. BTW, My son brought home a paw paw fruit from work about 20 years ago. I kept looking for more, no one ever heard of them. The coworker of my son's had retired, and he only knew him to see him. Fast forward, I bought paw paw seeds on ebay. They were all dried, but I didn't know at the time that that means dead for paw paw seeds. For years I tried to find them elsewhere, finally got some trees in WV through a Craigslist ad, most died. Then bought some at the Mother Earth Fair, waited 6 years for fruit and have been a hobbyist paw paw seedling backyard grower since. Just last year decided to try selling seeds on ebay, which is why I often search for them. I want to see where my 3 listings come up. They are usually buried by other seed types or multiple duplicate listings, but I still do ok. Now I find it interesting to know that the search results depend (somewhat) on who is searching.
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years agoYeah, I don't get tobacco, but they can very easily tailor results to the searcher. In fact, that's exactly what's supposed to happen, though I don't often see it. The only non paw-paw seeds I see are things like 'plumeria orange paw seed' & a couple of others that DO have paw in the title. But search results are supposed to be tailored, so I certainly don't doubt that you are seeing the Tobacco & I've def seen searches where a Sponsored ad (believe to be the PPC sponsored ads) have been shown very high. In fact, I had a thread about 1 that I came across once & a bunch of people chimed in, most believing it was a PPC ad. Even eBay took part in the thread. The tailored searches started quite a few years ago, but in reality, I don't really see them much, when I've compared with other users.
For some reason the Paw Paw looks like Durian to me, which I tried once & hated. I don't like the creamy/custardy/banana type fruits. I'm always willing to taste a new fruit though, so if ever given the opportunity, I'll totally try it. It's one of the things I love doing when I travel outside the US.
ETA: In my old thread, where I had a similar result, it was only theorized that it was a PPC Sponsored ad. No one was able to confirm & by the time eBay looked into it, they didn't see the odd result anymore. THey asked me to try the search again & sure enough, I wasn't getting it anymore either.
luckythewinner
·3 years agoI've sometimes considered using Free Shipping for some items, figuring it helps me with people who filter by Free Shipping. But--IF these numbers are close to ebay's numbers---I'd say that would be a wasted effort.
Just because people do not filter by free shipping does not mean they do not not make purchasing decisions based on free shipping. A better measure might be to look at what percentage of active listings offer free shipping, and compare that to the percentage of sold listings offered free shipping.
"Sort" (as opposed to the default, which on ebay is Best Match): Only 4% used the "Sort" function. (which here is by price, ending soonest etc)
I need more information. My default search is set to Newest First, not Best Match. Would I be counted as someone who used the sort function, or as someone who did not?
lotzofuniquegoodies
·3 years ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques
I'd like to have an idea of how many items are searched and bought using a google search vs eBay and keywords or keywords vs item specifics? Since day 1 I have always searched using keywords and closest. Closest usually/hopefully helps locate most reasonable shipping. Unfortunately from a Canadian perspective 9 times out of 10 that brings up something located in China.
As for the shipping option tab...Free being the only choice, it would be more helpful to have either postal services USPS/Fedex/UPS...Actual named services). Take it 1 step farther and USPS(services) vs Intl Standard/GSP malarky. Hmmm that probably wouldn't fly but soooo nice to < > dream!!! 😠N. America doesn't fly as a method due to the fact there are certain other countries that show USA but are not really when you check their physical location and related feedback issues.
-Lotz
farmalljr
·3 years agoOnly a dufus would search for "free shipping". If one is going to use a filter, they are going to use low to high price FIRST. That one filters by price + shipping.
Using free shipping MAY give your item higher rank, but if the low to high filter is applied, unless you are promoting, it's not going to help.
retro_entertainment_collectibles
·3 years agoReally hard to say as site like eBay need much larger sample.
There is doubt that searches past page two will fall of dramatic like no matter the web venue be it commerce or say car repair info.
Most folks will use the frontline search vs any advanced mechanisms, again, venue wont matter. Most folks will not drill down to awful far to find much anything whereby in the case of sellers, they will as it's rather part of selling.
Atop all this the ways varied venues handle mobile due to the real-estate limitation can be quite frustrating but eventually voice direct will be a winner... This is something eBay I'd have thought already be moving towards... Interactive Verbal Search Coach or "VSC" for short as we need more "AIW's" (Acronyms In World).
One place Amastone flies in that once one finds what one is looking for all offers are there so one not need run the "Scroll-a-thon."
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@retro_entertainment_collectibles I know you're up on current languages, platforms, which I am not, since I was primarily involved with designing & diagnostics of legacy software (which despite popular opinion is still very much in use). So a question for you, would the API even have a user's search criteria in it? That strikes me as very odd, as I thought the API was simply an interface. I realize that it *could* have it, but with eBay having always treated search habits & frankly anything related to search, as a trade secret, it would seem odd to me that search criteria would be passed via the API, had this been eBay's API. But I'm thinking mainly of 3rd party tools that would never need that info as the main users of the API. Perhaps there's a whole class of API users that I'm not taking into consideration?
retro_entertainment_collectibles
·3 years agoI've not really explored eBay's API's but it'd be extremely++ unlikely they'd have a statistical API public facing. But as I said many operations have focal API type accessors towards data mining both for internal and approved partner/sub contractor usages. I'm sure for example place like Amazon have a whole plethora of varied API's not publicly exposed and likely even automation for things such as re-stocking.
That's why I am engineering a mechanism whereby I can bury myself in the backyard in nothing more than a 55 gallon drum with a breathing straw and room for three months of Peanut Butter crackers and recycled urine... If there ever is a solar flare strong enough to take out considerable IT infrastructure I need be prepared in advance and booking the next UFO flight on Expedia likely not be an option.
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@retro_entertainment_collectibles Nah, not gonna bury myself. I wanna see the Aurora from that one 😃
What you're saying about the API's makes total sense. Interfaces in legacy/enterprise software to 3rd party companies were a pretty rare thing, so there typically was only 1 interface, not a variety depending on usage/need. They were also far less structured & more 'on the fly'.
I was kinda questioning the whole thing b/c eBay would never release that info, so I was surprised that a competitor would. Though I honestly don't see what's so secretive about search behavior/criteria, I can see that when you're the industry leader, you're using the knowledge of those behaviors in aggregate to bolster your own competitve position.
In general, I believe that search criteria does not get nearly enough press or attention. Most sellers don't even think about it. Ever. eBay certainly does, it's what they mean when they say "relevancy". It is critically important to our job as sellers, yet is basically an unknown. It's nice to see some attention to search behaviors, but as the data shows, most searchers are very vanilla. Even those of us who know how to search in a cherry vanilla with chocolate sprinkles way, rarely do. Most users seem to use the KISS method and that is not a surprise. Oh & now I want some ice cream.
retro_entertainment_collectibles
·3 years agoYup and another difference is how fresh the data can be consumed. Back in prior days it was everything from Diskette to Zip Drive, CD Rom, DVD Rom whereby now data can pulled in near real-time if needed. Of course most places with enterprise level traffic w/ web API's tend to limit access via number of calls per day and even timing between calls such as one per second.
As to the sensitivity of the data I'm sure there's more than I can guesstimate especially if yielding resultant data. Engineers a whole lot smarter than I able see patterns to help reverse engineer the algorithm(s) logic.
eBay's Cassini appears extremely integrated into the platform which can be great when ducks walk in a row but often ducks don't walk in rows. I understand wanting to suppress and/or low/high rank output data based on a variety of factors yet there are so many factors completely out of a sellers control. Satisfying metrics is an example whereby a seller can jump through hurdles try please consumers but you get a few cracked eggs and bam, it's entering in to ability to locate product. Unless one can mitigate metrics to filter out issues not within a sellers control it can skew things actually working against purpose. You loosen things up and sellers take advantage of that and lie, "No it's not out of stock... Cat damaged it."
Often the case where technology meets humanity that the perfect solutions are hard to come by or simply not possible. Most folks be they sellers or buyers don't understand the complexity under the hood of an eBay nor the positives and/or negatives or both of change be that willing or forced. Where there is an upside usually a down side to and visa versa all to often where IT and humanity meet.
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@retro_entertainment_collectibles Well, not religious, but Amen. Could not explain searching with quotes on here b/c too many couldn't understand the concept & kept trying to tell me, "well I shouldn't have to". Ummm, it depends on what type of search you're trying to do. I gave up. I don't love everything that eBay does. In fact, I hate a fair amount of it, but I would love to see everyone who complains have to spend a day running eBay's system. The complexity level is extraordinary, the required 24/7 uptime & functionality is amazing to me. I sure do wish they would do more testing before implementing changes though. Coming from the legacy side, I cannot fathom the changes without testing, in particular, regression testing, but DH is familiar with the currently hip Agile methodology (though he's an old enterprise guy too), so he's been explaining to me that the ramifications of the Agile methodology is exactly what we see with eBay. Implement a new change, but break 10 other things that worked fine in the process. I have no idea if they use the formal methodology, but it seems they use it at functional level knowingly or not. Or everything is just so distributed that no one knows what anyone else is implementing. Both seem to be at play from at outsider perspective. All in all though, it's quite amazing what they do accomplish.
retro_entertainment_collectibles
·3 years agoIt is rather crazy after so many years people still try reach at straws .vs. learning something.
Agile methodology is nuthin' new to me, we were building strategy gaming engines back in the MSDOS/Atari/Apple days hoping it all come together as seamless as possible. Boy, we had allot of seams and zippers! LOL.
I learned Assembler on a Radio Shack Model One TRS 80 back when I was a teen cuz' I pretty much sucked at the rest of living 🙄. I don't know, I was good at building scale models so somewhere in there is YouMan logic?
I don't know, I keep thinking someday programming be like just picking up assemblies with a 3D pointer and headset, dropping em', making associations/actions and all such things and done. Wella, Tic-Tac-Toe in three minutes straight and lookie there it only two Terrabytes large! Yahoo!
As to what eBay is doing its really hard to guesstimate as it'll all lay upon path(s) of trying project an uncertain future IMHO. I mean if I were advisory in a meeting of the Board Of Directors I'd be up atop the table dancing a Watusi Dance complete with Grass Skirt, Coconut Bra yellin', "They gonna kill us! The gonna kill us!" Throwing sheets of paper with everything from corporation names to nations flags and pictures of legislators on it.
Covid, global PolyTicks and a world that drifted forward(?) over the past 50 sure has made for a whole heap of dried spaghetti. Like an imperfect storm whereby each person continually is becoming a recycled rain drop in it.
Charting a company path through "Normal" (<-- Please remove from dictionaries Mr. DeSantis) was treacherous long before our current Karma vibrations but now? It's as if The Internet need be renamed "Internut" with it being Wiley Coyote, heaps of folks Road Runners and the masses are the "Acme" company.
The safer path IMHO (dropping the Coconut Brazier) is to steer towards liquidators and high price this/that's of businesses. Pretty much the only path that sort of assures a future as at somepoint The Powers that Pee are going to have to act as the InterNut has become "The New Wild West" and "We got's pro-TechT them's citizens from themselves cuz' that's what they didn't elect us to do."
I think my lady put Goo Gone in my Italian Roast.
richard1rst
·3 years agoOOOHHH!!! that is going to be REALLY fun.
I love out west now but I’m originally from New England and we pronounce our words differently. I walked in a car shop one day and told him a needed a new mirror (New England pronunciation MHRA). Blank stare.
I called 411 one day looking for the phone number for a company called Western Automotive (New England pronunciation Westin - as in Westin Hotel). Couldn’t find it.
And that’s just my accent.
My nutritionist (from Texas) once recommended I start taking a vitamin supplement called Cranberry Peel. Took a while to figure it out but what she was actually saying in her Texas Drawl was PILL.
Yup - that’s gonna be lotsa fun.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·3 years ago@richard1rst
I have voice recognition with my tv remote. I haven't won an argument based on what I was looking for and what it returned since day 1. Same thing happens when I call the cable company using voice commands. Scared? No. Petrified. Maybe when that becomes the only go to!!! To quote King Richard...Off with Siri's 😳 thank you very much!!!
-Lotz
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years agoThe sheer volume of this site is such that Search Filters are very often a requirement if you want a manageable number of results on eBay. When I search for clothing anyway, I almost always have to use them, even though I typically am not a 'filter user'. This may vary greatly from other sites, based on the fact that most others have a lot less overall listings in comparison.
Additionally, the API allows access to the user's search criteria? Am I the only one who finds that odd? I've never used eBay's API, so IDK, but I know that search behavior on eBay is considered some sort of great secret, so I would be very surprised if that info was accessible via the API.
As for the results, it's hard to know b/c eBay considers it so secret. But, I would suspect that significantly more users use Filters than the data above shows b/c eBay put a lot of time, money & effort into creating IS's, spefically for those who use left side drill down searches. I dont think they would have done that if 97% of people would never use it. BTW, my definition of filters INCLUDES things like size, color, brand, etc. Those are the ones people pretty much HAVE to use on eBay in crowded categories. As for the Filters you quoted above, I believe that most people don't use those. Occasionally, if I don't see what I want in results, I may change the Sort order.
I also believe that the majority do not change the order of results. Even I don't & I was in IT my whole life & know Search quite well. I just typically choose the quick, easy way & I am not surprised that most others do too.
From a software standpoint, allowing people to change sort order, no big deal. Allowing filters for sale items or FS or TRS, no big deal. Creating the new architecture to define filters that never existed before for fields that never existed before (Item Specifics) - really big deal.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
OP3 years ago@simply-the-best-for-you I just want to be clear: As I said, these stats are NOT ebay stats. They are from a competing site.
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years agoYes, I read that & understand that.
retro_entertainment_collectibles
·3 years agoCompanies have private API's, Partner API's and what's generally public facing with the associated keys. That way external firms hired to do various statistics, this, that and other thing can attain data towards the task.
As I noted upstairs in the thread sellers are going to be far more akin to drilling down searches and good input criteria when shopping then that of the average Joe/sephine which is where AI can come in.
Searching enterprise data sets ain't no fun!
simply-the-best-for-you
·3 years ago@retro_entertainment_collectibles Thank you, that makes sense. So maybe the 3rd party firm was given specific access to this data for this purpose. Or maybe the company in question, does not consider the methods of searching as confidential as eBay does.
studiodeflores
·3 years agoI use filters all the time when shopping for things that I collect. It substantially reduces number of results that I would have to search through. For example, when searching for 'antique' jewelry using keywords 'gold' or 'sterling silver', you will get thousands of extra results that are not even close to what you're looking for. In that example I always filter on "Pre-owned" plus a few other filters to remove all of the extraneous items. This tells me that it's worth the time to enter item specifics on listings because you just don't know what shoppers will filter on to narrow the results and your listing will be excluded if they do use filters.
richard1rst
·3 years agoWell, obviously I can only speak for myself, and I am not a big buyer. However, I do sometimes need things. My first search is by description and in plain conversational language. In other words the same terms as if I walked into a B&M store and asked a clerk where would I find "X". (Not actually “keywords†since that has a whole different connotation). Then I click on NEW and BIN. It typically defaults to Best Match and I can usually find what I am looking for fairly quickly. If I see a wide disparity in prices I will then follow up “price lowest to highestâ€).
Since Price will commingle “cost plus shipping†with “free shipping†and rank them by total price it is a useless effort to specify “free shippingâ€. Then again, as a seller, I know there is no such thing as “free shipping†but I can not be sure about how badly others have had their brains washed.
And that is as far as my search efforts go.
I never search by category simply because I can not be sure the seller has it in the right category to begin with. And a search by title will bring it up regardless of what category it is in. So I consider that a wasted effort.
coolections
·3 years agoI believe them all except best match. I find it really hard to believe that many people do not have enough brains to do a simple click away from best match. I by many things on the net and have never used best match. Free shipping is another one that I just cannot grasp. Are people that stupid to not know free shipping is the same price as the listings charging shipping. The only exception to that rule is if the seller does not have enough sense to calculate the "farthest' distance in their asking prices.