I search and get this: "We removed some search results to show you the most relevant listings."

[findingfinds888]

What the heck is that?? I do my search, I know what I'm looking for, I know how to search, how to delete what I don't want from the search string -- and then ebay HIDES thousands of items? I check the count of items, oh, 1700....goody, lots of choices. Then I scroll thorugh them and there's only 2 pages... less than 200 items showing!!  If I search for my Cup collection, yeah, its gonna come up with 20,000 items, but I only look at the newest listed as they are the only ones I haven' seen -- why is ebay deciding what I need to see?? 

So AGAIN and AGAIN I have to go back to the start of the search and click "SEE ALL ITEMS"  

Why does ebay keep hiding what I search for? Are they only showing sellers that pay MORE? And, On my other account, which is my SELLING account, are they hiding MY ITEMS from normal search so buyers don't even see my items at all and I don't even know it??

WHY, EBAY?  I know what I'm looking for, quit playing games!!  that's an old OLD OLD trick of AZ and that's why I never shop on AZ!! 

[mudshark61369]

@findingfinds888,

  "Why does ebay keep hiding what I search for? Are they only showing sellers that pay MORE"?

Of course ebay is going to give higher search visibility, to sellers who are high volume, pay for store subscriptions, pay for promoted listings, and are Top Rated, over regular sellers.  If you are listing your items as Buy It Now (BIN) instead of making those 30 day listings, where they do not get on the first search few pages until the last 24-48 hours  of the listing, run them as 7 or 10 day listings. At least then in a Best Match search, they'll show up in the first pages every 6 or 9 days. 

  " ... So AGAIN and AGAIN I have to go back to the start of the search and click "SEE ALL ITEMS".

If you know that you are going to to see "We removed some listings....",   When the first search results page opens, why not click on the See all listings button then?  It is their house and we have to deal with their rules, but there are work arounds.

[findingfinds888]

Ebay's playground. Sure. But the buyers are the reason ebay is here. I searched on AZ for a bedspread I wanted, a particular one. Search was ranging $1`70.00 to $250.00 for it. Then I clicked something, still don't know what I clicked on, and viola, one popped up for $42.00. A close out for that seller. Why didn't it show up first? I sort by price! So back to ebay -- who I can trust to show me what I request. And now this.

So sometime it "adjusts" my search, and sometimes it doesn't. And yeah. now I know to LOOK every single time to see if ebay has out guessed me without my say-so, but what about all the buyers who DON"T notice that tiny little sentence at the top of the 1st page of their search? They are now at duplicate of AZ, trusting a selling site to turn up what they are searching for and getting games instead -- and NOT finding what they are looking for as ebay has hidden thousands of listings that should be in the search the buyer entered.  And when they come back tomorrow or later today and the search results are totally different that they were earlier -- the buyers LEAVE. And, as a seller, those are MY buyers.  If I go to Wayfare and look up a particular brand of end tables, they don't play games -- I sort by price, they give me ALL items. So does Walmart.

I'm a can't-get-it-fast-enough-cheap-enough 21st century buyer and yes, I expect a selling site to not play games with me. And the buyers who come back tomorrow and find the same thing they bought yesterday at 1/2 the price -- even though it is clearly NOT a new listing and should have been in their search the day before, then ebay has lost another buyer. 

And that hurts all of us. 

[reallynicestamps]

Or possibly the Search is removing items that don't really match what you are looking for?

Perhaps the keywords are right, but the item was listed in the wrong category?

For example, when I search Best Match for 'Firefly' I get a lot of stuff about insects, when obviously I want spaceships.

So I have to adjust the category Search.

Best Match uses  a lot of criteria to sort through the 140million daily listings.

[emerald_door]

---

@findingfinds888 wrote:

...

And the buyers who come back tomorrow and find the same thing they bought yesterday at 1/2 the price -- even though it is clearly NOT a new listing and should have been in their search the day before, then ebay has lost another buyer. 

---

The other thing that can happen is that the buyer then buys the lower priced item, and files SNAD when the higher priced item arrives.  

[7606dennis]

Don't ya just love it when a company presumes to know what you want better than you. 

[seven_toes]

I've had a search where I'm fine tuning the parameters to remove items I don't want to see and click the "show all results..." every time and run into a change that will show an 80% drop in results.

To elaborate, an item "xxxx" is less than  1 in 10 of the current results.  I add -xxxx to my search to remove xxxx from the results.  I click "show all results...", if it shows up.  After all this I'm only seeing a tiny fraction of the results I had before.  I've done this back and forth for a couple of items I kept an eye on for a while.  An hour of fussing with the search and the only way to see the items I wanted to see was to leave the ones I didn't in the search.

Also, the "xxxx" I wanted to remove, while in the same category as what I was searching for, were different items.

[eburtonlab]

@seven_toes 

I add -xxxx to my search to remove xxxx from the results. I click "show all results...", if it shows up. After all this I'm only seeing a tiny fraction of the results I had before. I've done this back and forth for a couple of items I kept an eye on for a while. An hour of fussing with the search and the only way to see the items I wanted to see was to leave the ones I didn't in the search.

Adding an exclusion term ("-xxxx") to your search has the effect of disabling eBay's "search expansion" feature. If some of the results you are seeing without the exclusion term are the result of keyword substitution, then when you add the exclusion term, in addition to losing unwanted items with "xxxx" in the title, those wanted substitution results will also no longer be present.

Yes, it can be quite confusing. If you can figure out what the relevant substitutions are, you may be able to fine tune the search without having to put up with the unwanted results.

If you provide some actual search terms you are using, I may be able to provide some example searches to give you some ideas.

Here is an old link to the eBay.ca explanation of "search expansion":

https://www.ebay.ca/pages/help/search/expanding.html

[seven_toes]

I was in the end successful in finding what I wanted at that time, so don't have any relevant examples I can provide.

What I ran into was as I was searching for a specific phone I wanted, I had to add several excludes that would remove misc items listed in the phones category that were accessories or other phones with models similar model numbers.

My frustration was when I added an exclude that was a specific keyword on one of those accessories or other models, but that also removed several of the model I was looking for (that didn't have that keyword in their title or listing).  

As an example of the kind of search where I might spend the time to add a lot of excludes:

nokia 6 -(6.1, plus) -(bad, broken, parts, cracked, repair, damaged)

This search, even though is within the category of "Cell phones and smartphones", a sub category of "Cell phones and accessories", returns cell phone cases and other cell phone models.

[eburtonlab]

@seven_toes 

My frustration was when I added an exclude that was a specific keyword on one of those accessories or other models, but that also removed several of the model I was looking for (that didn't have that keyword in their title or listing).

One of the frustrating things about the "smart search" keyword substitution feature is that it can not be turned on and off, except by changing search terms. You cannot have implicit keyword substitutions and explicit exclusion terms at the same time.

nokia 6 -(6.1, plus) -(bad, broken, parts, cracked, repair, damaged)

This search, even though is within the category of "Cell phones and smartphones", a sub category of "Cell phones and accessories", returns cell phone cases and other cell phone models.

Possibly some sellers, looking to advertise their cases, are listing them in the wrong category on purpose. One modification of your search that might help -- adding a period or a dash between "nokia" and "6", which is basically the same as searching for "nokia 6" (with the quotes) -- will match any title where nokia is immediately followed by 6, but will miss any titles like "nokia 4 5 6 screen"

nokia.6 -(6.1, plus) -(bad, broken, parts, cracked, repair, damaged)

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=nokia.6+-%286.1%2C+plus%29+-%28bad...

Another possible search modification -- selecting only certain conditions (used, open box, manufacturer refurbished, seller refurbished) would eliminate most new cases or broken phones, though some sellers may be incorrectly listing their broken phones as "used", and you may miss some "new" phones that way.

Sometimes when searching you have to choose between false positives (cases, broken phones included in a search) and false negatives (filtering out new phones that you might be interested in). If you cannot find a good balance, you may have to use more than one search. Perhaps one search that is heavily filtered that only finds good candidates, but misses some, and then an unfiltered search to see if you can pick out the ones that the first search may have missed.

[seven_toes]

I appreciate very much the time you've spent explaining this.

I spent hours on a couple of the searches, changing the things you've suggested ad museum.  A list of the different ways I listed the search terms and checked or unchecked the different options on the left (usually just brand, condition, and item location), would probably be 500 long.

The search I ended up with had about 150 results, about 20 or so accessories, a few broken phones (listed as used or refurbished because a cracked screen that still turned on "worked"), a couple of other phones, and about 120 good results (HTC One M7, falling out of favor, but excellent screen and dual front facing speakers).

[eburtonlab]

@seven_toes 

I appreciate very much the time you've spent explaining this.

You are welcome -- I, too, have spent quite a bit of time honing down my many searches. It can still be frustrating when a well thought out search suddenly returns many unwanted results due to a change or flaw in the way eBay searches, or due to a thoughtless seller spamming categories with inappropriate or mislabeled items.

I like to think back to the old days of newspaper classifieds, weekly "Want Advertiser" magazines, and Usenet *.forsale groups, when finding items I was looking for was more a matter of chance and luck than search syntax. Back then I would have given quite a bit to be able to search worldwide for a replacement VCR remote by model number. Tasks that seemed so daunting then can be accomplished in seconds now with a few key presses.