Thursday April 4th 2019 search result pages will not load after the 1st or 2nd page in 2 browsers

[wpmath]

Cleared cache, cookies, ran 3 different malware and virus programs. Problem is not with my computer.  Tried Firefox and Chrome since IE doesn't ever show all results in my category of search. Results are the same: after the first (or first few) search results page loads correctly, subsequent pages will not load at all.  Called ebay CS to report the issue and was actually sent an email response from ebay saying,

"I've looked into it and it looks like there's a technical problem with our site right now. I've forwarded your information to our technical team so that we can resolve it as soon as possible.

In the meantime, thanks for taking the time to bring this to our attention and for your patience while we get it fixed."

We need more ebayers to call ebay and report this issue until they fix it.

[eburtonlab]

@wpmath 

Can you give an example of a search URL that exhibits the issue and a quick description of which page will not load (or the last item that does appear, if it is consistent)?

I have tried a few general searches in Firefox and Chrome, and I have not been able to recreate the behavior. Searches seem to load fine for me, and I am able to navigate to subsequent search pages (2, 3, 4 ... 10).

Does the issue still occur when you open the search page in a private or incognito window? In the past when this sort of behavior has occurred, clearing cache and cookies did seem to fix the issue for the folks experiencing it.

[wpmath]

I am not using any incognito or private access. The search is for "playing card", usual results are over 350,000 items so I am using and  (have for years without any problems) the filter available in Advanced search mode to exclude sports card dealers by individual seller name. Here are 2 screen shots (one for Chrome, one for Firefox) that show the failure to load. Please don't suggest I use IE as a browser; it does not load enough results in this category.

Chrome brower resultFirefox Browser result

[eburtonlab]

@wpmath 

Have you tried searching without excluding those sellers? I wonder if perhaps excluding too many usernames might be causing something to break. It is possible that eBay has changed something, so that a search that worked previously no longer does.

If you could copy and paste the exact address of that search into a post, I could see if it behaves the same on my machine.

The suggestion regarding an incognito or private window is just a test to see if things work when bypassing some of the normal browser profile and cache. In Firefox, you can choose to open a private window under the file menu, then navigate to eBay, sign in and try your search. Under Chrome, similarly open an "incognito" window and try that. When you are done, simply close the window.

IF I do a search of "playing card" (with the quotes) with no exclusions, I get about 13000 results, and I am able to navigate to other pages. Here is page 10 of that search in Chrome:

[wpmath · Accepted solution]

Here is the URL for my saved search playing card page:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_oac=1&_nkw=playing+card&_in_kw=1&_ex_kw=&_sacat=0&_udlo=&...

I think you have hit upon something: by my adding 3 more excluded sellers yesterday, that seems to have broken the ebay URL page finder. I am going to remove those additions from my excluded seller list and see if that works.

I'm still puzzled by the fact  that your results are so few when I am getting over 300,000 results with my saved search. See screen shot of saved search page which show 339,419 results WITH excluded sellers.

[eburtonlab]

@wpmath 

Thanks for the URL -- I am getting similar results: after the first couple of pages of search results, either the page does not load or I get that "Page isn't working" HTTP 400 error.

I think the sheer size of the URL is causing problems. If you can figure out which of those sellers' usernames is no longer valid and delete those from your list of sellers, you may be back in business. Maybe copy the entire list to a clipboard, and then try pasting individual names into a seller search, and use that to trim down the list.

The reason that my search returned fewer results is that I was searching for "playing cards" with the terms in quotes; your search is more general and should find any title with both words, mine only finds results that match the phrase exactly.

Good luck with your searching!

[berserkerplanet]

I think you guys nailed it:

"The 400 Bad Request error is an HTTP status code that means that the request you sent to the website server, often something simple like a request to load a web page, was somehow incorrect or corrupted and the server couldn't understand it."

Not sure exactly though - when I have used too many search keywords, the search engine rejects it - there is some sort of hard limit on that (I think we discussed that a while back)

In this case it sounds like it isn't even getting to the point of the search engine parsing it - the initial server request appears to failing, likely due to overall request length.

Just recently I was looking into the browser aspect of allowable URL lengths (for Bookmarklet reasons), and it turns out any reasonably modern browser (except IE) has an effectively unlimited capability - that means this is probably a server side limitation.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/417142/what-is-the-maximum-length-of-a-url-in-different-browsers

[3eyedfishcatcher]

So if your GTC listing is over a month or 2 old it will not be able to be seen thus only new listings from drop shippers can be found and purchased nice.

[alaska]

I am having the same problem. It started 2 days ago. I always do my eBay keyword searches every day to cover the next 24 hours of auctions. I do the first page of 200 results and the next page doesn't load. It's a blank page. So the only thing I could do was to note the ending time of the last auction and try to start off there next morning. That worked yesterday. Today I had to start at auctions ending at 3:57 pm today, to pick up where I got stuck yesterday. But today I only was able to get to auctions ending today 5:13 pm. I click on "next page" and it's EMPTY. Here is the URL that gave me the first page of results: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_LH_Time=1&_okw=alask*&_from=R40&_oexkw=sportsman+PF+LG+nuggets+nugg...

The blank page:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_LH_Time=1&_okw=alask*&_from=R40&_oexkw=sportsman+PF+LG+nuggets+nugg...

[alaska]

If the problem is excluded sellers that are NARU, then eBay needs to make it easier for us to remove them from our searches. I've spent countless hours going through the list looking for the NARU sellers, checking one at a time, sometimes finding them, sometimes not. Sometimes going through my whole list a second time and not finding the NARU seller. If the NARU sellers break the search, eBay should create a search where we can input our list of sellers to exclude and eBay tells us which ones are NARU. For years now when there is a NARU seller in the list of sellers to exclude, when I click on an auction and then go back, I get returned to the top of page one of results. With no NARU sellers in my search, I get returned to the place I left off in the search results. So I have to try to keep the NARU sellers out of my searches. This has been extremely frustrating. We only have so much time to spend on eBay, and if much of that time is spent in housekeeping our searches, then we are not buying. And people wonder where all of the buyers and sellers have gone!

[alaska]

I just tried to get page 2 to load by hitting reload a few times. No luck. Then, while on the blank page (page 2), I highlighted the URL in the URL window and hit RETURN. Then page 2 loaded.

[eburtonlab]

@alaska 

The suggestion to remove NARU sellers was made not because I thought that the NARU sellers were necessarily causing a problem, but because I thought the length of the excluded seller list might be causing a problem, and NARU sellers would be the obvious choices to remove to shorten the list.

If I copy your search terms into a new search without excluding any sellers, the search works and subsequent pages load.

Try dropping a couple of names from your excluded seller list and see if that enables you to run the search.