Stuck in Loop as eBay is trying to "optimize" my searches

[parsetdx1847]

Very strange and frustrating behavior.  Let's say I search for something (category sports cards) - first, eBay wants to optimize my search results which usually sucks and removes items I want to see.  So there's your first point of feedback your optimization algo sucks.  Next, I click to see all results but when I do that you have lost where I am in the category tree - so maybe I drilled into single cards, when I click to see all results you may have taken me back up to the top sports card level.  Then when I try to drill back in and/or filter by an item criteria, you take me back into optimized results, then I click to get out of optimized results and see everything.... here is the loop.  This is just a giant database in a hierarchical structure with specific filterable criteria.  Why is it so hard to just let me walk up and down the hierarchy without losing the search terms / specific filters I have applied?  This is 2024, not 1994.  Come on.

[eburtonlab]

Some possible ways to work around eBay's "optimization":

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

If a search returns results that do not appear to contain your chosen keywords in the titles or item-specifics, try putting one of your search keywords in quotes.

Using quotes around one of your search keywords forces eBay to avoid any keyword substitutions or corrections and search for literal matches only. It will also disable the automatic category navigation, so when using quotes or exclusions you may have to choose your category manually.

If none of that helps, and if you are willing to share some details of your actual search, someone may be able to provide a link to a sample search.

[parsetdx1847]

Thanks for the insights.  I will mess around with that.  I use a lot of multiple term inclusion and exclusion such as (term,term) -(term,term) so maybe that is messing it up as well.  I noticed again today some weird nav behavior.  Let's say I'm viewing an item in category (which is down a bit in the tree) such that the breadcrumb is supercategory - subcategory - subsubcategory - then I click on subsubcategory to see all items in that subsubcat and when I then go to put search terms in to the main search box in order to search within that subsubcat, the dropdown on the far right of the search box is showing the supercategory and there is no option to force it to search in the subsubcat - so then you have to run the search in the super (or maybe it even defaults to all of ebay) and drill back down into the subsubcat accordingly.  Such dumb behavior.  If I'm clearly viewing a list of items in a super cat, sub cat, or sub sub cat when I input my search terms I obviously want to search in that same context.  If I wanted to search in a higher or lower cat, then I would navigate there via breadcrumb or left nav and then execute my search.  Stop "thinking" for me.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

I almost never believe a seller's complaints about the search on Ebay or Amazon are meaningful.

Sellers always seem to have different expectation for results than are in the implementation of a modern search.

Most sellers would be happier with a 1994 search where there is no intelligence other than word parsing.

As a buyer, I rarely have an issue with the search results which keeps me from making a purchase. Therefore, I have a high opinion of the search.

[eburtonlab]

Let's say I'm viewing an item in category (which is down a bit in the tree) such that the breadcrumb is supercategory - subcategory - subsubcategory - then I click on subsubcategory to see all items in that subsubcat and when I then go to put search terms in to the main search box in order to search within that subsubcat, the dropdown on the far right of the search box is showing the supercategory and there is no option to force it to search in the subsubcat - so then you have to run the search in the super (or maybe it even defaults to all of ebay) and drill back down into the subsubcat accordingly.

I have seen similar complaints lately; it appears that eBay has changed something that has resulted in making it harder to search a subcategory directly. I believe that changing your search keywords defaults to searching all of eBay.

I had run into instances of this behavior before. I found one way around it was to search by choosing keywords first. From the search results page, using a desktop browser, you can drill down into the categories and subcategories using the links on the left side of the search results page. Once you have narrowed to the correct category, then you can choose your category-specific filter options.

Searching in this way -- choosing keywords, then category, then filters -- seems to work reliably and require much less backtracking than trying to search another way, provided you know what search keywords you want to use.

If I'm clearly viewing a list of items in a super cat, sub cat, or sub sub cat when I input my search terms I obviously want to search in that same context.

That may be how you expect the search to work, but that is not how it seems to actually work now. It may be different because of a conscious decision at eBay, or it may be different as an unintended side effect of some other change. I do not know. It may revert to the behavior you prefer. Or it may not.

You may find the present behavior non-intuitive and frustrating, but if search worked the way you preferred, someone else might be frustrated by searching for one thing, then searching for another, different thing and finding that the new keyword search was still confined to the original category. That user might complain that eBay was being non-intuitive and causing frustration by not allowing the new search to provide results in all categories by default.

I tend to agree that your version of the search is preferable, if for no other reason than it is much easier to manually switch from searching a subcategory to searching all categories (if that is desired) than it is to do the reverse. Provided the user knows enough to do that.

But I also recognize that the eBay has an interest in catering to marginal app users that do not spend much time thinking about how the search actually works, and eBay likely figures that experienced users like you and I that have strong opinions about how the search should work are probably in a much better position to handle default behavior that is not our preferred behavior compared to those marginal app users.