Saved Searches are getting less and less relevant

[ducks2k]

I've been using a few saved searches for years.  Starting about a year ago, there were more and more "sponsored" results, some with no rational connection to the keywords I was searching for.  In the last several months, the responses have been getting farther and farther afield, and I also find that my sales notifications contain the same weird sponsored results.  a worse aspect is that when ebay makes a poor choice of match to my keywords, it carries that on to "other things you might be interested in", which wind up being 100% irrelevant.  These irrelevancies seem to carry a life of their own and shade other searches of other words at other times.

I collect and sell hunting and fishing revenue stamps.  A perfectly sensible search for "trout" and "stamp" gets me responses for the baseball player Mike Trout, which ten leads to sponsored baseball items.  Putting in a "-Mike" helps, but ebay still thinks I love baseball.

The worst are saved search daily emails, where the exact search has no good matches that day -- "Virginia" "Bear" "Stamp".  In the olden days (last year), there would just not be an email for that search that day.  Now, the search email returns a bunch of random items and suggests other random items "similar" to those random items.  A total waste of time.

[lgl11]

Interesting. For fun, I did a search of trout stamps and came up with 23 pages of nothing but trout stamps.  The search for Virginia" "Bear" "Stamp" I got 1 page with the correct stamps.  I put my search in the stamp category. It was a new search, not a saved one from the past. 

[ducks2k]

@igl11 - yes-ish - typed in searches are still working tolerably.  For quite a while there has been a lot of "helpful" interpretation of the requested keywords, and it has slid around precisely where the search was performed (title, description, item specifics ...)

For several years, it has been pointed out to me that each individual buyer will get a different response to the exact same search based on "best match" algorithms.

This particular complaint is about SAVED searches and the daily emails.  One would think that 'Virginia Bear Stamp' would return items that have the 3 words in either the title, description or some combination, but that does not seem to be the case for saved searches.  In a typed-in search, (usually) one gets a return of matching all 3 words somewhere, and then a divider and "results matching fewer words".  This does not appear to be the case with the saved searches.

Here is yesterday's message for "virginia bear stamp".  Looking at the returned item itself, I can't see any of the words, much less all of them.  Yes, the NFL has "Chicago Bears" and maybe a team in Virginia or maybe some player from Virginia, but I sure can't spot a connection.

[denlekke]

saved searches are completely useless now
i have multiples accounts worth of extremely specific saved searches, quoted text, excluded words, price limits and all of it is being ignored starting a few months ago
now i've just set my email filters to delete everything from ebay and no longer buy anything because i don't have time to search every day

this feature was a huge differentiator versus other services like facebook marketplace but now i have no use for ebay anymore

would love to see them revert whatever they changed but i'm not optimistic

[eburtonlab]

i have multiples accounts worth of extremely specific saved searches, quoted text, excluded words, price limits and all of it is being ignored starting a few months ago

eBay has reorganized many categories, so searches that worked fine years ago may no longer work as they once did. It might be worth trying to modify existing searches or to create new searches entirely for those searches that are no longer providing good results.

In some cases, if a search URL gets too long, some parameters may be ignored entirely; new searches take advantage of a different format that limits the size of the URL by not including some redundant info that was present in older searches (including keywords from a previous search).

If a given search is not providing the results you want, try narrowing the search using additional keywords, changing the category, or adding filters, or else starting a new search entirely.

Keyword searches should match items with the same keywords in the title or item-specifics. Some keyword searches are steered into a particular category. If eBay reorganizes categories, a search that was limited to a small category may start returning more results from a larger parent category, requiring further narrowing using filters or additional keywords.

If a new search seems to be providing the right results, unsave the old search and save the new search in its place.

In some cases, eBay will try to match synonyms or variations of your keywords. If you think eBay is using an incorrect synonym, you can usually avoid that by putting one of your keywords in quotes, or by using an exclusion term. Quotes and exclusions will typically bypass many of the "smart" search expansion features, and will return only literal results that match your search terms.

If eBay's Saved Searches are no longer providing useful email updates, you may want to unsubscribe from those emails using the envelope icon near each search on the Saved Searches page, rather than by blocking all email from eBay. That way you can still receive important account information.

There are third-party search services that will let you run a certain number of free searches, and which will email you when results matching your criteria are found. That might be a good alternative worth looking into if you are experiencing problems with eBay's Saved Search emails. Google automated searches ebay for some options.

[jeanjet]

I'm just started getting emails this week with large numbers of search results for every save search and exactly none of them have match my search terms.  What used to be eBay's best feature has, it seems, become a worthless waste of time. 5 days in and I know better now than to open the emailed laundry list of irrelevant results. Bummer

[eburtonlab]

You may want to consider temporarily stopping email alerts for the searches affected, and possibly creating a new search with one of your search keywords enclosed in quotes in order to bypass the faulty keyword substitution feature which seems to be producing the irrelevant results.

Use the "Feedback" link on the search results page to alert eBay to the problem with a particular search. The more users report issues directly to eBay that way, the more likely eBay is to do something about the problem.

[ducks2k]

I will need to track that down specifically -- see if I can find something in the next day or two.  On a gut level, I know I can't trust the search, but coming up with a specific case or two should be interesting.  Thanks for questioning my assumptions.

[eburtonlab]

On a gut level, I know I can't trust the search

That's fair.

eBay has certainly provided many reasons to be suspicious of the search results or at least to lack confidence in their consistency or thoroughness, even before the most recent issues. eBay has not really been forthcoming about what sorts of assumptions were or are being made on users' behalf when eBay alters the search behavior.

But although eBay's search can be frustrating (and more than occasionally infuriating), it is still possible for average folks without any arcane knowledge to search for and find and buy things on eBay despite ongoing issues, including the most recent keyword substitution mess.

I still hold out hope that if enough users actually contact eBay through the "feedback" link on the search results and provide examples of searches gone wrong, that eBay will stop fiddling with individual keyword rules and address the entire issue systematically.

[ducks2k]

I tried a few things and actual violations will be more difficult to find than I thought.  More troubling to me than actual innacuracies in the search results, are the "similar" and "recommended" suggestions, which tend to bear little resemblance to the search request.  I suppose that some of it can be blamed on advertising and keywords, but a lot of it is just misinterpretations of the search context.  I have to work hard to avoid getting 'rubber stamps' when I want 'collectible stamps', or getting Mike Trout baseball cards, when I want trout stamps (and no - '-Mike' doesn't solve it).  I'm pretty sure that a lot of the precision loss is due to making searches more user friendly.

[elizabeth@ebay]

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@ducks2k wrote:

I've been using a few saved searches for years.  Starting about a year ago, there were more and more "sponsored" results, some with no rational connection to the keywords I was searching for.  In the last several months, the responses have been getting farther and farther afield, and I also find that my sales notifications contain the same weird sponsored results.  a worse aspect is that when ebay makes a poor choice of match to my keywords, it carries that on to "other things you might be interested in", which wind up being 100% irrelevant.  These irrelevancies seem to carry a life of their own and shade other searches of other words at other times.

I collect and sell hunting and fishing revenue stamps.  A perfectly sensible search for "trout" and "stamp" gets me responses for the baseball player Mike Trout, which ten leads to sponsored baseball items.  Putting in a "-Mike" helps, but ebay still thinks I love baseball.

The worst are saved search daily emails, where the exact search has no good matches that day -- "Virginia" "Bear" "Stamp".  In the olden days (last year), there would just not be an email for that search that day.  Now, the search email returns a bunch of random items and suggests other random items "similar" to those random items.  A total waste of time.

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Thank you for reporting this @ducks2k. We are having this looked into.

[kh-gary]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.