Why no wildcards in search terms?

[jmcnerney]

Not sure which section to put this in...

Why are there no longer any wildcards allowed in eBay searches? Years ago, I used to be able to include an * (to include any combination of letters/numbers) or a ? (to include any single character). This was very helpful when search. For example if I was searching for something related to snow, I could use snow* for my search term, and it would pick up snow, snows, snowing, snowplow... Now I have to manually include each term. If I wanted to search for dog or dogs, but not dogma, doghouse, dogbone, I could just search for dog?

I'm guessing it was 10 years or so ago that those wildcard used to work. Why kill such a useful feature?

Or am I just missing something?

[nobody*s_perfect]

I sure miss the * wildcard, too. When they dropped it, there was some excuse about overloading their search capacity.  It was just the first  of many search-related decisions that have affected buyers negatively.

[jmcnerney]

Wow: "Overloading their search capacity". I guess it's easier (for them). Isn't automating that sort of thing exactly why we have computers?

[chapeau-noir]

The reason eBay gave was that wildcard searches rather than specific keyword searches reduced functionality and returned 'cluttered' search results.  I personally think it has more to do with how Cassini operates its best match function.

[eburtonlab]

I have seen speculation that wildcard functionality was not entirely compatible with eBay's move toward pure keyword-based searching, keyword substitution, keyword-to-category navigation and of course, sponsored listings based on search keywords.

Wildcards would make it much harder to mine useful data from users' searches as well.

[simba6]

It puts a much larger load on the servers.  Your looking at a good ten times the load.  That gets expensive as more server capacity in needed to keep things from bogging down.

[megaladoink]

I’m seeing that and agree that it would put a stress on its servers but that’s a lame excuse when negatively affecting customer experience. I’m sure my seller fees alone could have covered their regional overspill charges and make them on-demand hosts and any spikes are accounted for(assuming they are using AWS). If they aren’t using AWS id bet a dollar this functionality ended when they moved away from AWS and decided to roll their own infrastructure 

[simba6]

We used to have that feature.  It puts a big load on the servers.  Then to keep up, more servers are needed that takes more power to run and cool them.  Still it's a very handy feature and would make for more sales I think.

[chapeau-noir]

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@megaladoink wrote:

I’m seeing that and agree that it would put a stress on its servers but that’s a lame excuse when negatively affecting customer experience. I’m sure my seller fees alone could have covered their regional overspill charges and make them on-demand hosts and any spikes are accounted for(assuming they are using AWS). If they aren’t using AWS id bet a dollar this functionality ended when they moved away from AWS and decided to roll their own infrastructure 

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The wild card was removed during Cassini's interminable roll-out. eBay has always used its own infrastructure and uses a distributed server structure.

[mw1975uk]

I UTTERLY AGREE - PLEASE, PLEASE eBay reinstate the asterisk as a wildcard for searches.  Please remember: YOU ARE HERE for your customers, your customers are not HERE FOR YOU!!!

My area of interest is coins - especially Parthian coins, but I need to enter the word Parthia or Parthian in searches, in svereal European languages (esp. French & German) - e.g. 'Parthia', 'Parthian', 'Parthie', 'Parthe' - rather than just 'Part*' to cover them all.  I recently wan't to exclude 'tetradrachms' from my search, but whereas previuously I would just put '-tetra*', I now have to include '-tetradrachmon' to remove German postings.

I think it is time for eBay members to rise up in their thousands and demand that the asterisk wildcard be re-instated for the benefit of the users, rarther than for the benefit of eBay.

[mw1975uk]

Surely it is up to the consumer to determine whether too many items have been returned, so that they can refine their search further!  It is not up to eBay to say: 'It puts stress on our servers', or 'It overloaded our search capacity' - B****cks/B*****it.  So thank you 'jmcnerney' for resurrecting this as an issue .

[mw1975uk]

eBay seems to have been unaware of the fact that the asterisk wildcard not only INCLUDED more items in the search, but was also capable of EXCLUDING just as many unnecessary hits through it's -(xxxx) {minus brackets facility} - I feel sure it was a case of 'roundabouts-&-swings'!

[kh-vince]

Hi everyone,

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

Thank you for understanding.