Search engine

[ubid-ikill]

What the hell is eBay's IT people doing? The search engine is all screwed up. I can't search for specific items because I can't narrow my search down to find these items and there is no general section anymore to target these items. Obviously Ebay has never heard of the adage, "If it ain't broke, DOT FIX IT". Yet another example of Ebay's incompetence.

[redlinear]

---

@ubid-ikill wrote:

What the hell is eBay's IT people doing? The search engine is all screwed up. I can't search for specific items because I can't narrow my search down to find these items and there is no general section anymore to target these items. Obviously Ebay has never heard of the adage, "If it ain't broke, DOT FIX IT". Yet another example of Ebay's incompetence.

---

EBay seems to think their shoppers are stupid.  It's getting to be farily insulting to those that stop by eBay to find something.
Search results are going to show you what eBay wants you to see (for various reasons).  Regardless of what you "thought" you would see.

[ingyhere]

At some point a few years ago they loosened the matching so searches brought back more items. Since then a lot of my old saved searches bring back all kinds of unrelated garbage.

[eburtonlab]

I can't search for specific items because I can't narrow my search down to find these items and there is no general section anymore to target these items.

What are you searching for and how are you searching? Why can't you narrow your search?

I seem to be able to narrow down a search by picking appropriate keywords, searching, then choosing the specific category from the left side of the search results page (using a desktop browser), and then picking relevant filter options.

If you are trying to browse a category and cannot think of any appropriate keywords to search with, try using the category name as your keywords.

[eburtonlab]

At some point a few years ago they loosened the matching so searches brought back more items. Since then a lot of my old saved searches bring back all kinds of unrelated garbage.

That can happen if eBay reorganizes categories -- targeted searches of a narrow category can become much more general searches of a larger, overarching category. Or eBay may change keyword associations that may find more substitutes for your keywords than your original search did.

It can also happen if you are using "Best match" sort order; lately that sort order seems to return many more results much more loosely related to the original keywords compared to other sort orders. 

You may still be able to modify your saved searches to get back to returning more targeted results, or it may be worth creating new searches for those things.