Search completely broken?

[terrycanarsky]

There have been multiple threads on the seeming broken Search function --- and little acknowledgement by eBay that there is an issue. 

Today I was working on listings which still have http problems.  As always, I ran a search to check on competitors and our place in the queue.  What I found was interesting - in a bad way.  alan@ebay or any other blue, is there a reasonable non-tinfoil explanation for this?  Limiting visibility is one thing if a seller refuses to jump through all the hoops.  Utterly refusing to show listings is a whole different kettle of fish.  There is a problem here, eBay.

Exact same general (with noted exception on the second photo) search parameters.  No preferences set, as you can see.  FIVE results are reported, but only one shows.  This is not our listing.  (As I was typing this, two more results were returned but only as numbers, not actually anything which can be viewed.)

No filters other than "new", the mfr and the part#

Only filter added was "free shipping" - which returned an entirely different listing than above with the same search parameters.  I did not change the search term - it changed itself (removed 'Total Source')  when I clicked "free shipping".  Again, our listing doesn't show even though we offer free listing.

Same exact search only with free shipping

[akadrewcat]

I am finding this same problem A search I frequently run lists "8 results" but only one displays and is accessible to view!!! Needs fixing.

[lcd3rd]

SAME PROBLEM HERE!!!

[babclassics]

Agreed - only get 1 result when 5 or 7 items should be shown.  But on other searches get many results.  Have not found the pattern yet but it is WAY BAD BROKEN.  I ALL browers and on the web app! 

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@terrycanarsky wrote:

There have been multiple threads on the seeming broken Search function --- and little acknowledgement by eBay that there is an issue. 

Today I was working on listings which still have http problems.  As always, I ran a search to check on competitors and our place in the queue.  What I found was interesting - in a bad way.  alan@ebay or any other blue, is there a reasonable non-tinfoil explanation for this?  Limiting visibility is one thing if a seller refuses to jump through all the hoops.  Utterly refusing to show listings is a whole different kettle of fish.  There is a problem here, eBay.

Exact same general (with noted exception on the second photo) search parameters.  No preferences set, as you can see.  FIVE results are reported, but only one shows.  This is not our listing.  (As I was typing this, two more results were returned but only as numbers, not actually anything which can be viewed.)

No filters other than "new", the mfr and the part#

Only filter added was "free shipping" - which returned an entirely different listing than above with the same search parameters.  I did not change the search term - it changed itself (removed 'Total Source')  when I clicked "free shipping".  Again, our listing doesn't show even though we offer free listing.

Same exact search only with free shipping

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Please post the other threads you found on this issue if possible.  Somebody needs to get an acknowledgement from eBay on this issue.  Wondered why my views and sales suddenly dropped to zero today.

[xcaliburcollections]

Views and impression? You can see those? I am still staring at information that has not updated since July 3rd, which is much better then the last 3 months of looking at a 20 day lag

[eburtonlab]

Something is definitely broken.

Here's a link to the original poster's search, so that folks can verify it and see if it is still broken:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=roller+bearing+hy1333396&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_fsr...

Currently I see "5 items found", but only one is actually listed.

[alan@ebay]

That is a strange one, @terrycanarsky. We've sent a report over to our technical support team for them to review. 

Thanks for calling this out. 

[xcaliburcollections]

alan@ebay
Is this the same technical support team the Merchant Support has been contacting for handling the hundreds of calls to merchant support for my crippled account?

[bolara-1]

Is it really broke or working as designed to lower sales of sellers selling in used items a certain CEO only wants new items being sold thus manipulating search results to bury the sellers selling used items increasing the likely hood new items from drop shippers will only be bought providing skewed results backing up his false narrative that used items are a thing of the past and drop shippers relist new items in ebays future. Combined with implementing policy changes that favor drop shippers and cause sellers selling used items to lose their selling metrics, lack of sells and the new seller agreement policy that sellers listing items in certain categories if their items do not sell their account can be deemed to be under performing resulting in additional final value fees can be assessed at a later time.  

Then due to lack of sale and no money to pay their account fees their store gets removed. Now why would he want to favor drop shippers over sellers with used items. After all no mater what sells Ebay still gets their cut. It  most likely boils down to cost. A drop shipper typically uses 1 to 3 images when a seller selling used items could have up to 12 items. The drop shipper might list a item for  days but generally removes it sooner due their supplier changing price or because the item is no longer in stock. Even if the drop shipper pulls a item and relist another only using 1 to 3 image slots on the servers. While a seller selling used items generally would use 8 to 12 image slots on the ebay servers per listing. The seller selling used items may sell their item in the first 30 days but typical may need at least 2 to three months to find a buyer. Somme items could even be on the server for more than a year. So compared to seller selling used items the drop shipper uses less servers which means a reduced amount of servers and a reduced cost of buying and maintaining the servers. If you look over the technical issue section the main source of users posting problems with issues are sellers selling used items. You can click on their names and pull up their profiles and verify this by selecting to look at their listings.  Because the CEO only wants new items changing on a daily or month to month basis it is reasonable to assume the poor support where issues are not acknowledge and addressed is another part of his plan to tank sells of used items while only promoting listings of drop shippers after all if you do not let the buyer see the items you don't want to sell they will not. You get rid of the sellers who listings cause a higher operating cost thus making the final value fees Ebay collects more profitable.

[sherrysstock]

There are serious serious issues with Ebay going on and when you call and talk to 10 reps you get 10 different answers. No one listens. Most of us have been dealing with ebay and know it better than the CSR. I have a shell of a shop, my listings can no longer be found, my views weren't showing but are now. they said oh nothing wrong even thought I went from average of 20 sales a day now down to 2 a day. I have been doing this 10 years. There is something wrong. I keep telling them my listings are not being found. And I get my seller snapshot yesterday ALL figures were right BUT the listing number showed 318 I have almost 2000 listings...key to the issue I think so but they try to tell me it's a fluke. I ready for an attorney. They charge me alot to show my listings and they are not doing that anymore.

[vicpicked]

Exact same thing is happening to me. Very frustrating and since I don't spend extra for search results, my items are probably not being seen.

[terrycanarsky]

Considering that what I was looking at/for was a NEW item, that particular argument is invalid.

While your supposition may hold merit, I think it's far simpler than that.  Whomever does the coding simply cannot do the job given the tools eBay provides. 

Having a dedicated test server away from the live public  venue would allow these errors to be caught before going live and increase efficiency to the nth degree.  But that means hiring on highly capable coders who have the ability and willingness to actually FIX problems rather than hide behind talking heads who barely acknowledge anything has gone awry. 

I'm not talking about the blues.  They're about the only ones who do communicate with us even if we don't always like the answers.

~M

[monstertoybox]

I am coming up with the same search result for "Plush Ewok Celebration Basket". Only one is showing (not ours) and it shows there should be five. Sales have been awful today, so something is definitely wrong.

[babclassics]

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alan@ebay wrote:

That is a strange one, @terrycanarsky. We've sent a report over to our technical support team for them to review. 

Thanks for calling this out. 

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alan@ebay

Please post here when a solution is found.  I am happy to provide more examples if needed.  The missing items "are there" but only 1 shows.  As mentioned earlier, If you change round the search order like highest price / lowest price / etc you still get 1 item, but a different one (the first / highest matching item).  Also this does not affect all searches and i have not figured out the common thread.

I tend to agree with some of the other feedback in this post about continuing problems.  I have 2 suggestions that could help a lot with the frustration:

1) Create a new area in the system status page that lists known serious problems that are being worked on.  This would save sellers so much time in researching problems they face in order to call in or post here.  This would be a very welcome change at least for me.

2) Why not have a "test system" and a "production system".  Nothing can be promoted to the production sytem until the fix / change has been verified on the test system.   I don't know of any other major real-time transaction processing systems that don't have a test system.  I would be more than willing to test on that test system and give feedback.  It would be time well spent versus all the time i spend debugging and reporting issues that crop up on a steady basis.

Please consider these things for implemetation.

[7198dave]

I am having the same problem too. I was doing a search and it said there are 7 listings but only one is showing. So I click on the listing and scroll down to where ebay shows similar items and I see a bunch of the items I was searching for that didn't show up in my search.