Boolean search not working like it should?

[sebbyonline]

If you search for (trading cards) you get around 42k results, but if you remove the parentheses and just search trading cards then you get 2.5 million. Why is it omitting so many results? This is an issue for doing multiple searches such as (trading cards,video games) which will omit a lot of the results because of the parentheses. Any fixes here?

[sebbyonline]

So no one knows?

[safan80]

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The search changed happened more than a year ago. sometimes you can't even filter out for parts when looking for cell phones without limiting your results.

@sebbyonline wrote:

If you search for (trading cards) you get around 42k results, but if you remove the parentheses and just search trading cards then you get 2.5 million. Why is it omitting so many results? This is an issue for doing multiple searches such as (trading cards,video games) which will omit a lot of the results because of the parentheses. Any fixes here?

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[mudshark61369]

@sebbyonline,

I believe that last reply is right, that ebay's search no longer works using Boolean search terms. However, we have a member @eburtonlab  whom I just tagged that can confirm that.

"This is an issue for doing multiple searches such as (trading cards,video games) which will omit a lot of the results because of the parentheses".

Your search returns will depend on seller's titles, if some do not add "video game" to their title it will not appear.  A search using Trading cards, will include all categories of cards, getting more specific may lessen the number of results, but could omit some.

    A better search may be for example: Super Mario Brothers, trading cards and if a drop down prefilled category appears it will probably be Non sports trading cards, that will work best, but a few other subcategories, may have more in them.   I just did one using the search that returned 545 results for SMB cards. The search filters in the left hand column for card packs, single cards trading card lots, may add or subtract results to the initial search.  Good luck!

[eburtonlab]

A search for trading cards will return all results that have both keywords trading and cards located anywhere in the title or item-specifics, in any order.

A search for (trading cards) is different. That will find results with the words trading cards in that direct order with no intervening keywords in between. This is not a Boolean "OR" search, but rather the same as searching for trading-cards.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=trading-cards&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0

In that search, you will miss all the results that have the keywords in a different order, or that have other keywords in between the two.

Searching for (trading cards,video games)  is a Boolean search that will return listings that match either trading-cards or video-games. If you want to see all the results that have those keyword pairs in any order, you will have to perform two separate searches for trading cards and then video games rather than using the Boolean "OR" search.