Bad search results -- returning false matches

[hamilton3d]

I often search for "Maine" in categories of interest.  Recently the search tool has been included many false matches, apparently based on the search key "Main".  I use search to narrow what I need to look at.  The addition of unwanted "hits" is not helpful.  False search results are a frustrating waste of time.  This is a serious degradation, but I see no easy way to report the defect to eBay.

[eburtonlab]

@hamilton3d 

eBay's search has some quirks, but I don't think it should be finding results with "main" when searching for "maine" (without quotes). Can you give an example of such a search?

Sometimes if a change in spelling returns more results, the search will substitute one keyword for another, but there should be a note of that at the top of the search and a link to undo the substitution. To see this, try searching for "boockase" (without the quotes).

If you want to make sure your search only includes results with the state name in the title, put that single word in quotes like this:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313.TR10.TRC0.A0.H0.X%22maine%22+p...

Only titles with "maine" in them should be returned. However, titles such as "Portland, ME postcard" will not be found with such a search, where they might be found if you used the state name without quotes.

If that doesn't work for your particular search, you could also try searching "maine -main" (without quotes), but that would not find titles such as "main street, portland maine postcard".

[hamilton3d · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the response.  Here is the faulty search:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313.TR11.TRC3.A0.H0.XMaine.TRS1&_n...

I just ran it and got 595 hits, many of them with only "Main" as their link.  But your comments about "quotes" inspired me to try "Maine" with quotes.  And guess what?  That seems to be a workaround. 

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313.TR11.TRC3.A0.H0.X%22Maine%22.T...

That gives 355 appropriate hits. 

It's still a bug and a regression, but I solved my problem for now.  Thanks again.

[eburtonlab]

@hamilton3d 

Glad you are now finding good results with your searches!

But I noticed something odd: when I do that first search you linked to, with maine unquoted, I get the 355 "Maine" results, not the 595 "main" results you see. I tried the link in three different browsers just in case there was some hidden dependency, but the results were consistent. I am unable to reproduce the "main" results.

I suppose it could be a glitch, or else it's possible that eBay is taking into account a user's past search history when providing new results, but if that's the case it may be difficult to troubleshoot search problems, since not everyone will be seeing the same results. And I'm still at a loss as to why the search would consider "main" as a replacement for "Maine" in the first place, beyond the fact that they sound the same (which shouldn't matter to an algorithm, unless someone programmed the search to try homonyms as substitutes).