Ebay has screwed up searches (AGAIN)

[stonecabin]

When searching, results are switched to "all category" from, for instance, "collectibles".  Or  from "newly listed" to "best match".  I know what I am looking for better than Ebay does and I am not going to look through 10's of thousands of items needlessly.  Ebay needs to get its s**t together otherwise many people will just give up....WHAT GOOD IS DOING A SPECIFIC SEARCH IN A SPECIFIC CATEGORY IF EBAY SWITCHES IT???????????

[eburtonlab]

@maltzhu 

I really would like to know why I searched for satin bows the other night, I got headlamps and a lot of hardcore automotive parts.

If I go to the main ebay page and type in "satin bows" (without quotes) in the search field and hit "search", I currently get about 24,500 results in the following category:

Crafts > Multi-Purpose Craft Supplies > Crafting Pieces > Ribbon

If I manually change the category to eBay Motors, I get 29 results, mostly satin-finish items: Chevy bow-tie emblems, or nautical parts -- ship's bow light housings and anchor chain bow rollers.

In short, I have no idea why that search would wind up in the eBay Motors category, unless you were already in that category from a previous search, or a mistyped keyword prompted an unwanted substitution that went unnoticed.

It is certainly possible that there was a problem with eBay's search. There are many problems with search, and there have been lots of complaints in the last two weeks or so -- but most of the complaints seem to be problems with inappropriate keyword substitution returning more results than expected, results that do not match the keywords or obvious substitutes.

Perhaps eBay is dynamically updating their keyword-to-category navigation, and the last few users who searched "satin bows" wound up buying automotive items, so eBay started sending users to that category, until enough crafting supplies buyers tipped the scales back in the other direction. I do not know.

Not much to do but add your observation to the ever-growing list of search oddities to be on the lookout for.

[harold_griefbacon]

The two things that annoy me the most when I search on eBay:  suppose I search something like "art deco vase". I am halfway through the search when I discover that eBay has limited the results to something like "early 20th century collectible vases". Since many sellers may not be aware of which category they are "supposed" to list under, if you want to see all the art deco vases available, you then have to switch to "all categories" and start over. Then again, eBay, has something called "default" for allowing sellers based upon location. It capriciously seems to include some international sellers but not others. So, once again, if you want to see ALL the listings which interest you, you have to change the settings under "location" to include all the sellers. And start over AGAIN. Very annoying.

[dltaylor42240]

I keep complaining and i does absolutely no good. So I am buying much less these days Not willing to spend the time wading thru hundreds of things I didn't search for

[stonecabin]

You are right that complaining to Ebay does no good.  Once you finally get thru to a living human all I have gotten is a bunch of lip service (AKA **bleep**).   Everybody suffers; especially sellers whose items don't sell as well because buyers are frustrated with searches;  and many buyers are going elsewhere.

[stonecabin]

I see ebay had to "bleep" my term for bull excrement (initials).  Geez.....................