I noticed today that the eBay Advanced Search page has changed. I also noticed that all of a sudden I am getting 0 search results for the items I am looking for.
The searches I have been trying are in the Books and Magazines category. Title searches for simple terms like "farm" and "sea" produce 0 results. The message I get says "We found 0 results for "sea" in Books and Magazines, so here are some other search results" -- and all the results are in clothing and makeup.
I then tried to and three-word title/description searches in the Books and Magazines category (relating to books I confirmed are listed on the site prior to my attempt) -- for example, "george washington." Again, 0 results.
I talked to eBay customer service and the representative was able to reproduce the same results. Had no explanation why it was happening, but promised to report the problem.
In the meantime, I can't find items I want to buy and I suspect buyers can't find the items I am selling due to the same problem. I would further guess that it's not just happening to me.
It seems that whatever update/upgrade was made to the Search engine has messed it up in a big way. I noticed earlier this week that hundreds of my search bookmarks that I have been using for the last 5 years suddenly stopped working. Instead of search results, I get a message saying "eBay redirected too many times." Obviously eBay has changed something.
The eBay Search Engine is the most important function on the site for both buyers and sellers. If the Search Engine is on the fritz, it is going to hurt everyone. I don't know about anybody else, but I can't afford to lose even a day of sales.
