Annoying Search behavior: Category refinement (and others) doesn't stick when changing search terms

[spoolin01]

Any moderate user of eBay probably has concluded as I have, that Categorization is one of the weaker features of the site.  I won't belabor my complaints thereon that score, but it's true.

To compensate, I often use a restrictive search term that I know will return items that are mostly in the Category I wish to search.  It's the quickest way to jump into a Category.  Once there I'll broaden the terms to be more inclusive.  This regularly results in the Category defaulting back to "All".

I don't recall it was always this way, and I can imagine eBay thought this would help users avoid the frustration of changing searches without realizing they are still locked in one Category, but it is pretty annoying when searches require a lot of trial and error refinement.

This is also a problem with other search refinements, like Condition, Format, and whatnot.  You can spend a lot of time refining the various search features, then you change one too many terms in the title search field, and all those refinements disappear.  Pretty annoying.

It would be preferable to have, as many sites do, the default condition that refinements stick, until they are actively cleared, either singly or in toto.

[rfmtm]

This is a common complaint among both sellers, who have items hidden, and buyers, who can't find what they want, because ebay decides what you are to see by changing search terms.  Make sure you use the "tell us what your think" or "feedback" button on the page.

Here's a good overview of the problem and what others think about it.

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/letters/blog.pl?/pl/2019/1/1546372508.html

[spoolin01]

It's clear that search is screwed in many ways. To me, quite a lot of the interface changes made in recent years, when the site was radically revamped to accomodate "low-information" mobile devices, have been a step backwards. In addition to what appears to have been allowing poorly quality-controlled GUI design (basic information missing from standard view formats) and coding (broken links and features still ongoing), the mucking around with search also appears to have introduced bugs and maybe adverse features into what at one time was a pretty well refined site. I think ca 2014 or so was the pinnacle of GUI refinement, and it's gone backwards in many respects.

eBay has made good progress in refining user terms to increase transparency and transaction confidence, but the user interface is still IMO fairly mediocre.