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Who's brilliant idea was it at Ebay to limit search results for most 'relevant' listings.

When I run a search on Ebay for parts I get very limited results and see a box that says that some of the search results have been removed to show me the most relevant results. I have to click another box to see all of the results. In who's opinion are the results relevant? I guess Ebay wants to limit the search results so potential buyers will limit their purchases on Ebay.

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Re: Who's brilliant idea was it at Ebay to limit search results for most 'relevant' listings.

Whoever came up with this should be fired immediately. Ebay is probably losing billions of dollars a year because our search results are being blocked.  This the biggest mistake ebay has ever made. It not only blocks buyers but it also blocks sellers.  Ebay, get your head out of your @#$!!!!

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Re: Who's brilliant idea was it at Ebay to limit search results for most 'relevant' listings.

@nifty6t,

 

After recently having to do 6 searches for WWII militaria items, currently listed,  that used to be able to return all results with two searches (mostly because of uninformed sellers) I have come to the conclusion that the staff members who "fixed" the search system, had been smoking too much maryjane  at home during the pandemic.  Hopefully, more sober minds will work on fixing the fixes.

"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FOOLPROOF, BECAUSE FOOLS ARE SO DARNED INGENIOUS!" (unknown)
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Re: Who's brilliant idea was it at Ebay to limit search results for most 'relevant' listings.

It appears that eBay is now adding that message to some "Newly listed" or "Ending soonest" searches with more than twenty-five results. Previously it only appeared in "Lowest first" sorts.

 

You should only have to do it once per individual NL or ES search; if you are using saved or bookmarked searches, replace the old search with the new search results after using the link, and then you do not have to do it again for that particular search.

 

Or else add the following to the end of your search URLs:

 

&_blrs=recall_filtering

 

Different users search different ways, and expect to see different things. Some users expect to see every possible result that matches their exact search criteria; other users only want to see the most relevant results so they do not have to wade through hundreds of listings to find what they are looking for.

 

eBay's search will always be a compromise between too many results and too few results. eBay will try to steer the search into a particular category, or substitute alternative keywords -- or change the spelling of your keywords if a slight variation produces many more results. eBay's goal is to make it easy for the average marginal user to install the app on their phone and be able to search and find some decent results  and to purchase something quickly without having to learn complex search syntax and without having to know exactly which subcategory they should be searching in.

 

The end result is that power users that want to see every possible result that matches their exact search terms will have to undo some of eBay's default assumptions, and work around eBay's default behavior to get the results they want.

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