Ebay Search Engines

[tommytreasure]

It's getting impossible to search for items. Only a few are coming up when there are many.  I "stumble" on items that my previous searches should've picked up. It happened again today.  Using some of the exact title words do not always bring up the item. I've shopped on Ebay for decades for collectibles, never had this issue before. Anyone else notice problems with searches? Ebay needs to look into easier more accurate searches. No one has all day to look for things. 

[eburtonlab]

@tommytreasure

Can you give an example of a search that doesn't behave as you expect? Or an item that you think should turn up in a search, that doesn't?

eBay searches have some odd quirks; many times these will work in your favor, but sometimes they can produce unwanted results. If you know what the search is doing, you can more easily bypass the unwanted results.

[airsheep]

Yesterday I searched for a factory reconditioned Roomba. I found one, put it on my watch list, then kept searching. However, no matter what combination of search terms I used, that particular Roomba never reappeared, even when I went back to the original search. I don't think ebay's search engine is bright enough to take saved items out of a search, especially when they clutter it with barely related junk.

[eburtonlab]

@airsheep

If I do a general search for "Roomba", I get about 2185 results in the "Vacuum Cleaner" category (eBay's implicit category search):

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313.TR11.TRC2.A0.H0.Xroomba.TRS1&_...

If I filter that by "manufacturer refurbished" condition, I get 30 results:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=roomba&_sacat=0&rt=nc&LH_ItemCondition=2000

Is the listing you were looking for still active? If it sold some time after you first found it, it would no longer show up in searches of active listings. If you searched completed listings, it should appear there, though, unless it has been removed by eBay.

If you have the item number or a link to the actual item, I can try to figure out why it doesn't appear in the search results.

[creekcoyote]

Searched today for Francisco Rebajes jewelry.   Under that search criteria,  I got 36 listings.   Under Rebajes jewelry alone, I got 301 listings.   One would think that using the full name of the maker would have brought me more listings.

  I guess not.

[eburtonlab]

@creekcoyote

One would think that using the full name of the maker would have brought me more listings.

By adding "Francisco" as a search term, you will eliminate all the auctions that don't include the maker's first name in the title -- which is most of them -- without adding any additional items that weren't already in your first search.

In general, adding more search terms will give you fewer results.

[castlemagicmemories]

I've noticed this lately.  I was searching for something and found very few listings.

I tried a different search and many more listings came up.  I noticed that the key words that should have been earlier in the title were not, and I believe that is what drove those poor search results.

It's not searching for all the words you enter, it is focusing on possibly just the first four words, so if an important keyword is placed after those four words, you won't bring up many listings.

[sharingtheland]

My search experiences yesterday:  weird.   I know it had to be ebay testing something, maybe using the 10% off frenzy (I used that word loosely) to see how limiting search returns would impact sales.

Anyway, I used the exact same search terms for certain items that I always use and I always select "Newly Listed".  I search these items all the time.  Which means I'm very, very familiar with the search results.

Yesterday, my search results started out okay but then quickly degenerated to dates all over the place; listings were no longer in Newly Listed order.   AND, drumroll, I got only 50 results per search.  One page.  That was it.

I know there are more than 50 items for sale in each of the searches I conducted.  Have I mentioned I search them regularly?