EBAY SEARCH

[1guerino]

Just another example of EBAYS manipulative, skewed search.  One search, highest, lowest, and best match.  Three different results.  NOT COOL.

[ksedar]

How can this happen?  Shouldn't all the search numbers be the same regardless of how they are sorted?  I don't understand this.

[eburtonlab]

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

[a_c_green]

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@eburtonlab wrote:

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.

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Yes, the option to remove the "streamlining" filter on the Lowest First sort order is available on the mobile app. It does not appear on the desktop page.

Whatever that "streamlining" filter was intended to achieve is unclear, because it's only in effect on the Lowest First sort option, no others. Testing shows that it throws out valid search results that are even lower than whatever it retains, and anywhere from 50% to 90% of the search results matching the search parameters are simply discarded.

This messing about with the Sort By ordering Lowest First makes no sense, because everything returned by the Search request should be presented. The Sort By options are (or should be) simply for sorting the results, not screening them.