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Search engine on ebay has become usless

As a buyer on ebay, I am fed up with their search engine.

 

I can put in a exact description of a product or.. even simplify it. Yet what I am looking for will NOT come up in the search list.  But.. if I put in a part number, it comes up??? (with the title description I previously put in).

 

It seems like ebays search is rigged for some reason.  Very bad.

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Search engine on ebay has become usless

@quasar2001 

 

If you expect to enter a search term and have eBay's search engine spit out every item that has that exact search term in the title, you will be frequently disappointed.

 

eBay has several "smart search" features that can depart significantly from logical expectations. But then, eBay is not really interested in providing logical, complete search results; eBay is interested in sales. And the results that drive the most sales for the marginal user can often produce perverse results in certain situations.

 

One "smart search" feature that often causes problems is called "implicit category navigation" -- which is when eBay steers a search into a particular category where its statistical analysis indicates most of the sales from that search occur. If you notice that after your general search you wind up in a particular category you did not select, you can change the category dropdown back to "all categories" and run the search again for more results. But you have to notice the category change first. If you get tired of manually changing the category, you can try adding an exclusion term to your original search to defeat this smart search feature. Instead of searching for "cash register" (without quotes), search for "cash register -octopus" (without quotes). The former search will default to the "Point of Sale" category, the latter will remain in "all categories".

 

Another "smart search" feature is known as keyword substitution. eBay will often search for synonyms of your carefully chosen search terms, or will change your keyword if a different spelling turns up more results. If you want to search for an exact term and avoid any substitutions, try putting your individual search terms in quotes "like" "this".

 

It would be nice if eBay provided a simple way to bypass the "smart search" features, such as a checkbox on the search page, but until that happens your best bet is to try to outsmart the "smart search".

Message 2 of 9
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Search engine on ebay has become usless

On similar topic - EBAY WON'T DISPLAY COMPLETED OR SOLD ITEMS WHEN I'M SEARCHING FOR AN ITEM - EVEN IF I PUT IN AN ITEM # FOR SOMETHING I SOLD - ANYONE know what's happening - been going on for about 3 hours.

 

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Search engine on ebay has become usless

@water4life!! 

 

EBAY WON'T DISPLAY COMPLETED OR SOLD ITEMS

 

This particular issue seems to be related to Adblock rules -- if you temporarily disable AdBlock Plus you should be able to search completed or sold items again.

 

See here:

 

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Technical-Issues/sold-ltems/m-p/29631954#M54866

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Search engine on ebay has become usless

AdBlock Plus has never been an issue before - did something just change?  It only started happening this morning.

Message 5 of 9
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Search engine on ebay has become usless

@water4life!! 

 

It appears the latest update to the "EasyList" subscription of AdBlock blocking rules causes problems for eBay's search results of completed items. It does not seem to be a problem for every browser, so there are likely other confounding factors. But for most folks having this problem, temporarily disabling adblock on eBay seems to allow the search results to be visible.

 

It is not yet clear if there is an easy way to roll back the EasyList filter list to the previous version, or a way to edit the filter list, or if there is a suitable substitute filter list.

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Search engine on ebay has become usless

I installed the EasyList filter set and can't make it fail no matter what I try (may be fact that I'm using FF52 and FF31, that the filter set I downloaded was updated 3/24/19 and may have been fixed, or could be other layers of armor preventing the perfect storm of fail (don't have a virgin test browser instance with Adblock Plus but no other armor set up and not going to go to the effort)

Couple of thoughts.

That Easylist set is a combination of adblocking rules and element hiding rules. The fact that some mentioned that the sold or competed items disappear after they load indicates that an element hiding rule is the culprit. (element hiding rules are the ones with ## in them). Adblocking rules intercept the browser requests for content and blackhole it. Element hiding rules engage after the page is loaded, and just suppress display of specified page elements (like a banner ad DIV element. Except on really fast hardware , that action will result in the "content appeared" and then vanished behavior.

All the stuff in the Easylist ruleset is just normal custom user rules like on the user part of Adblock Plus (maybe the newer version are different but I doubt it). Those rules can be edited, commented out with a ! at the beginning of the rule line, enable/disabled with a checkbox, searched for using CTRL-F, etc.

There is an /ebay_ads/* adblocking rule there, and and /ebayad. ad blocking rule there, and a ##.ebayads element hiding rule there. That element hiding rule might be the culprit.

Somebody seeing the problem needs to get in there and start disabling or commenting out rules and see if one (or more) of them are causing the disappearing solds/completeds. Open the Adblock Preferencees window, switch to the subscriptions tab, click on the Easylist subscription to focus it, click in the lower or right pane where the rules are, type CTRL-F to search, search for eBay, find the target rule, and uncheck the box or type a ! at the beginning of the line to comment the rule out. Then reload the sold page and see. Repeat as needed (re-enable or uncomment rules previously disabled/commented if they are not guilty), until maybe the bad rule is found.

If a bad rule is found, post it here and I'll look at it and see if anything can be seen (as I said, I can't make it fail, but I can look at the sold page structure, and at the rule, maybe deduce what it is trying to do, maybe why it is producing undesired effects, and maybe a revised version of it that works as intended (may be that the rules selectors are too broad and just need to be refined - actually that ##.ebayads element hiding rule is super broad, but shouldn't be affecting sold search results elements unless eBay screwed up and assigned, for example, an ebayads class attribute to a non-ad container on the search result page - or some other wrong attribute. Possible, but I didn't find it.)

There are a ton of google ad related element hiding rules there also, and google ads are the ones that appear on the top of the pages. Pubmatic content on right sidebars possible too.


In summary, I suspect it's possible that it may be an Adblock Plus Easylist ruleset element hiding rule with an overly broad selector, maybe in conjunction with an eBay oops where the coder tossed a class ID that an Easylist rule targets onto a parent container instead of just the child container with the ad, and the actual search result content in a container also under that parent is getting wasted along with the ad container (or something similar).
Message 7 of 9
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Search engine on ebay has become usless

Duuuuuuude or duuuuuuudete.....  YES......  and if you watch in your search it will bring up the same item over and over again from the same seller page after page.... it does it in the sold listing to......  What IS GOING ON?  Smart search my rear........

Message 8 of 9
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Search engine on ebay has become usless

A good thing to do is watch a item in a category you like to search. Open that item before searching and then at the top of the page open that category in a new page. The run your word search to get the results in that category you are interested. Now here is the kicker...… you can only do 1 search in that category and any refinements or new searches will default back to a broad search of ebay so they can push promoted items at you. Every time you want to do a new search or refine your search you will need to go back to the original item page and open the category again in a new page then run your new search.

 

It is a obvious tactic to push items you do not want in order to get extra money because the seller is paying them to promote the item. The part they are ignoring is if buyers can not find what they want they go else were and take their money with out making a purchase. So rather than taking a sell and making 10 percent off of the sale price they are losing a sell because they tried to get 16 to 17 percent. Then they lose a buyer who no longer comes back and make purchases. Sound familiar well its just back customer service but now its called innovative ways to make money that really does not make money.

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