eBay

cbro9276 · ‎10-01-2023

Why am I seeing only 160 listings regardless of the subject in Search? There should be hundreds. Until recently if it gave me that number I had option to expand search but not anymore. How can I get the TOTAL search results or can I?

eburtonlab · ‎10-01-2023

The "Price plus shipping: lowest first" sort order provides filtered results -- often drastically filtered. And the option to "see more results" may not always be shown as it should. The filtering may vary depending on the keywords used.

If you encounter a drastically filtered result for a keyword search using a desktop browser, you should be able to use the "Feedback" link in the lower right corner of the search results to provide feedback on your search to eBay developers. The more users provide info, the more likely something is to be done about the over-filtration problem.

You can avoid that problem entirely by using a different sort order.

If you have few results, try sorting by "highest first", then starting at the end of the results, scroll up instead of down. This also avoids the problem of variation listings with low-cost variations appearing at the top of the lowest-first sort.

If you have a bookmarked or saved lowest-first search that you use a lot, you can avoid the filtration by adding the following to the end of the search URL, then saving the resulting search:

&_blrs=recall_filtering

bigshnitzeljesse · ‎12-14-2023

Is there a logical reason ebay is doing this? The filtering for "Lowest price first" to 160 results seems to randomly choose what items to remove.

eburtonlab · ‎12-15-2023

Is there a logical reason ebay is doing this?

Most likely it is a bug.

a_c_green · ‎12-15-2023

@eburtonlab wrote:
Is there a logical reason ebay is doing this?

Most likely it is a bug.

Agreed. It looks like some kind of filtering option is getting accidentally applied when the selected Sort By order is Lowest Price + Shipping. That option is not applied to any other Sort command for Search results.

Exactly what the filtering is doing is unclear. My best guess from a while back (when this was the topic of some discussion) is that it's accidentally de-duplicating listings that (by its own logic) appear to be the same (e.g. show exactly the same price, although it looks a bit more complicated than that).

The Mobile view gives you the option of lifting that "streamlining" option, but the desktop view does not; you're stuck with it there. Interestingly, when you do lift that option in the Mobile view, it will reveal more items that are even lower priced than what was showing when the "streamlining" was in effect.

This has been reported to eBay in the past, but they have been silent on why it is doing that, and nothing has been done to address it.

eburtonlab · ‎12-15-2023

The filtering itself is intended for that sort order -- the (occasional) presence of the "streamlining" message and the link to "see more results" are indications that the filtering is the result of purposeful programming, even if the message and link do not always appear as they should. It is the drastic extent of the filtering that is likely the result of a bug. Possibly that bug also prevents the message and link from appearing as well.

There are good reasons why eBay may want to remove some listings from that particular sort. In a search for widgets that "lowest first" sort order is likely to put all kinds of widget parts and accessories at the top of the results before any actual widgets are shown. But there is no good reason I can think of why so many searches should be limited to exactly 160 results out of thousands or millions with no apparent indication of that and no obvious way to get around the filtering.

I have said previously that I suspect the drastic filtering is the unintended result of two "smart" features that may each work well enough independently, but that interact together in an unanticipated fashion to produce an unwanted result.

a_c_green · ‎12-15-2023

@eburtonlab wrote:
The filtering itself is intended for that sort order -- the (occasional) presence of the "streamlining" message and the link to "see more results" are indications that the filtering is the result of purposeful programming, even if the message and link do not always appear as they should. It is the drastic extent of the filtering that is likely the result of a bug. Possibly that bug also prevents the message and link from appearing as well.

I think we're generally in agreement here, though I would not describe the "streamlining" message as occasional. I can always see it in the Mobile app when viewing Sort By Lowest Price + Shipping; I can never see it in the desktop view of the same results. I think that's more of a coding oversight than a bug, as the operation is occurring anyway; you simply have no way (in desktop view) of turning it off.

I also don't doubt that the "streamlining" is deliberate when it's in effect (i.e. when the user has selected Sort By Lowest Price + Shipping), but its function is just opaque. I can see no logic in what gets through vs. what is blocked.

@eburtonlab wrote:
There are good reasons why eBay may want to remove some listings from that particular sort. In a search for widgets that "lowest first" sort order is likely to put all kinds of widget parts and accessories at the top of the results before any actual widgets are shown.

I don't think the "streamlining" logic has any capability of examining the listing contents to see what's there. I think it's looking at metadata associated with the listing, such as its total costs, or the seller data (maybe seller ratings, location relative to the prospective buyer, that kind of thing), and is applying some kind of logic there to weed out listings that it doesn't want.

@eburtonlab wrote:
I have said previously that I suspect the drastic filtering is the unintended result of two "smart" features that may each work well enough independently, but that interact together in an unanticipated fashion to produce an unwanted result.

Yes indeed. If someone is setting a couple of bitwise operators, for example, then accidentally reads them back as one byte value instead of two separate switch flags, the resulting function could go off in the wrong direction as a result.

Here, for example, the Sort By value is simply supposed to be letting the user choose in what order he wants to view his results (i.e. the results have been selected already; this is simply an ordering choice), and yet if he selects only the Lowest Price + Shipping order, and no other option, he'll only get an unexplained subset of all the listings that actually match his Search request.

Speaking of "unexplained," I'm wondering how closely anyone from eBay actually reads this Technical Issues group. Hardly any threads show an eBay response, and even a glaring bug (e.g. the recently botched display of the Scheduled Listing Time pulldown menus in the listing form, reported by several users including myself, seems to have gone unnoticed and unacknowledged; the problem is still there as of a few minutes ago). It should be a simple fix to the current release, even if no one wants to roll back whatever changes they made that broke it.

eburtonlab · ‎12-15-2023

I would not describe the "streamlining" message as occasional. I can always see it in the Mobile app when viewing Sort By Lowest Price + Shipping; I can never see it in the desktop view of the same results.

Whether the filtering occurs is highly dependent on the keywords used and the numbers of results obtained. For instance, I see the "streamlining" message for this search:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=postcards&_sacat=0&_sop=15

But I do not see the message for this search:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=postcards+topographical&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_sop=...

The latter search is limited to 160 results, while the former is not.

I cannot recall ever seeing a "streamlining" message on a 160-result search, which leads me to believe there may be a connection.

I also don't doubt that the "streamlining" is deliberate when it's in effect (i.e. when the user has selected Sort By Lowest Price + Shipping), but its function is just opaque. I can see no logic in what gets through vs. what is blocked.

Particularly for the drastically filtered searches -- I agree.

I don't think the "streamlining" logic has any capability of examining the listing contents to see what's there. I think it's looking at metadata associated with the listing, such as its total costs, or the seller data (maybe seller ratings, location relative to the prospective buyer, that kind of thing), and is applying some kind of logic there to weed out listings that it doesn't want.

When the streamlining is working as intended (when not filtering 99+% of the results), it could be something as simple as the presence or absence of certain keywords in an item title associated with past sales when another user has searched with the same keywords.

For instance, eBay could have noticed that when a user searches for a widget, the listings most likely to wind up being purchased contain certain keywords or attributes (new, genuine, latest-edition, gold, complete) and lack certain other keywords or attributes (old, copy, previous-edition, brass, broken). It would not be difficult for eBay to come up with lots of data and give each keyword a numerical value, where higher values indicate positive correlation with sales, and then give each listing a total number based on adding up all the keywords in some weighted fashion, and drop listings that fall below a certain cut-off.

It is also easy to imagine how such a system could go horribly wrong if the wrong threshold value was used, or if certain keywords were somehow assigned incorrect values.

I'm wondering how closely anyone from eBay actually reads this Technical Issues group.

Difficult to say, as it is possible for the group to be monitored by anyone without posting here or showing any outward signs. If there are eBay folks reading here -- aside from the Community Team, of course -- they are not advertising that fact.

It is also possible for an issue to be raised, recognized by eBay personnel, and for the issue to go publicly unacknowledged or otherwise uncorrected for other reasons: such as a particular page or feature being scheduled for updating -- or deprecation -- in the near future, or because a fix is not as simple or straightforward to implement as it would first appear, or because other issues are a higher priority.

Since it is difficult to know if an issue has been officially recognized by eBay or not, I recommend folks read and post about issues here to see if others are experiencing the same problems, and that they also use the "Tell us what you think" or "feedback" links on the various eBay pages to alert page developers more directly. The more people report an issue, the more likely it is to be prioritized by eBay, I think.

a_c_green · ‎12-18-2023

@eburtonlab wrote:
I also don't doubt that the "streamlining" is deliberate when it's in effect (i.e. when the user has selected Sort By Lowest Price + Shipping), but its function is just opaque. I can see no logic in what gets through vs. what is blocked.

Particularly for the drastically filtered searches -- I agree.

Ugh. I have a very unfortunate update: That stupid "Streamlining" message has now started appearing in the Desktop view when sorting one's Search results by Lowest Price + Shipping (i.e. instead of just fixing the problem with the Lowest First sort in the first place).

To make matters worse, it looks like the preferred sort method is no longer being saved from one session to the next. It's now defaulting to that useless Best Match option instead of retrieving the user's previous setting when searching for the first time in the desktop view, a problem that previously only occurred in the mobile app.

I swear, if they ever get programmers who actually USE this site, I will be amazed.

eburtonlab · ‎12-18-2023

That stupid "Streamlining" message has now started appearing in the Desktop view when sorting one's Search results by Lowest Price + Shipping

The streamlining message has been appearing for a long time now, just not consistently, and not when the most drastic filtering seems to occur.

it looks like the preferred sort method is no longer being saved from one session to the next.

Try setting your default sort order again using the Customize menu. It seems to be working for me fairly consistently, though from time to time the setting may change -- possibly due to an update by eBay altering the defaults.

If you have trouble getting your settings to stick, try using a different browser, run a test search that returns lots of results, then change the sort order on the search results page to your preferred view before opening the Customize menu and changing the settings there. Then rerun the search and see if your sort order is maintained.

a_c_green · ‎12-20-2023

@eburtonlab wrote:
Try setting your default sort order again using the Customize menu. It seems to be working for me fairly consistently, though from time to time the setting may change -- possibly due to an update by eBay altering the defaults.

That did it; thank you! It's been so long since I ever had to go into the Customize menu that I forgot it was there.