Searching for results that contain either words not working properly

[post2forum]

 I am trying to make a search for bedsheets that I can receive e-mail updates for. I am trying to search for either westpoint stevens or home essentials bedsheets at less than $20. I can search either of them fine, for example

westpoint stevens twin sheets

home essentials twin sheets

Combining them gives problems:

("westpoint stevens","home essentials") twin sheets

I also tried without the quotes. I get only 6 listings back and I don't know why. I saved the separate searches instead.

[berserkerplanet · Accepted solution]

4210 results for ("westpoint stevens","home essentials")

6 results for ("westpoint stevens","home essentials") twin sheets

58 results for twin sheet ("westpoint stevens","home essentials")

The difference is sheet vs sheets. Most of the returned listing titles use sheet, not sheets, and the way eBay search works these days with no wildcarding they are not interchangeable.

[post2forum]

Thanks. It's weird that if I don't use the or comma operator and I search westpoint stevens sheets it seems to show sheet results as well. I've changed it to

("westpoint stevens","home essentials") twin (sheet,sheets)

[berserkerplanet]

Nice addition there. That should do the trick.

eBay uses something they call autoexpansion that's a version of wildcarding, that gets disabled when any advanced syntax is used like you are doing there.

This might help explain it a bit: http://developer.ebay.com/devzone/finding/concepts/findingapiguide.html#autoexpansion