eBay

mittenmon · ‎06-13-2019

Even my saved searches are yielding item results that aren't even related to what I'm looking for, which is a very broad category (digimon or pokemon). I can't even FIND any new items because the search yields so many unrelated items. I never have had this problem, and check my saved searches daily.

eburtonlab · ‎08-09-2019

@downrightspecialkids

I tried adding an exclusion and it nearly DOUBLED my results!

Adding an exclusion term disables the keyword-to-keyword substitution feature, but also disables the keyword-to-category feature, so if your previous search was steered into a particular category, adding an exclusion term and trying the search again would provide results in "all categories", and thus could provide more results in some cases.

https://www.ebay.ca/pages/help/search/expanding.html

eburtonlab · ‎08-19-2019

@yellowfairdog

Why have you changed the search function?

Yesterday I typed in

Magic Roundabout pin badges

and got hundreds of items that were unrelated pin badges.

Instead of a general search of

magic roundabout pin badge

Try adding a nonsense exclusion term to your search:

magic roundabout pin badge -octopus

That should eliminate items that do not match your search terms by disabling eBay's faulty search expansion feature.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_odkw=magic+roundabout+pin+badge&LH_PrefLoc=2&_sop=10&_osacat=0&_f...

See the rest of this thread for other examples of broken searches.

Search has been badly broken since late May or early June. The "search expansion" feature that takes your search keywords and either selects a category or substitutes alternative keywords seems to break down in many cases, providing results that do not actually match your keywords. This is particularly apparent if you use a sort other than "best match" to view your search results. Not everyone agrees that the search is actually broken, though, even when faced with obvious examples.

Search expansion, faulty or not, can be disabled by using Boolean operators: putting an individual search keyword in quotes like "this", using parenthesis to search this OR that (this,that), or using a nonsense exclusion term with a minus sign like -octopus as one of your search terms.

dhbookds · ‎08-19-2019

On the magic roundabout pin badges...........I'm showing pertinent results in all of the sorts.........Best Match, newly listed, etc. ?? not using a nonsense term........

eburtonlab · ‎08-19-2019

@dhbookds

The person I was responding to was searching on ebay.co.uk where a lot more results are returned for that initial search -- both good and bad.

dhbookds · ‎08-19-2019

oops..... missed that...........thanks

yellowfairdog · ‎08-19-2019

Thanks. I'll give those a try.
Of course there are people who think there is nothing wrong with it. They were the ones admiring the emperor's new clothes....

cheezeria · ‎08-20-2019

Months ago I decided to list some Peewee items in my inventory and discovered the same issue. I called Customer Support --> "Yes, we see it too, we're on it..." ya right. Today almost 950 000 hits: Halo, Pokemon, Disney, BMW... **bleep**? For fun I'll call again today and see what CS doesn't do.

chosen*one · ‎08-23-2019

is there a reason that ebay doesnt go back to the boolean math search protocols? using the universal * in searches brought more customers and allowed you to search for things that are inevitably spelled incorrectly

I believe it would bring more customers back to ebay from amazon

eburtonlab · ‎08-23-2019

@chosen*one

is there a reason that ebay doesnt go back to the boolean math search protocols? using the universal * in searches brought more customers and allowed you to search for things that are inevitably spelled incorrectly

There is some speculation about the reason for wildcard elimination in this letter and the comments that follow:

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/letters/blog.pl?/pl/2012/11/1354215868.html

It is still possible to use Boolean operators, though:

https://www.ebay.ca/pages/help/search/advanced-search.html#using

But there are many cases where wildcards are the obvious choice, and without that capability, instead of searching for something made in the 1950's by using

195?

users are forced to use ridiculous workarounds like this:

(1950,1951,1952,1953,1954,1955,1956,1957,1958,1959)

Now try that for anything that matches a year in the 20th century. Or for an alphanumeric part number that may have a series of suffixes. Wildcards just work better in certain cases.

I believe [bringing back wildcard searches] would bring more customers back to ebay from amazon

Unfortunately, eBay is more interested in catering to the Fisher-Price style phone app users. And to be honest there is probably more money to be made serving that crowd than trying to please the power-users that are reading the discussion boards who will probably eventually figure out some clunky workaround to get what they want anyway.

eBay's search could really use some consistency and transparency.