search function showing screwed results

[downrightspecialkids]

No matter what I have been searching for, I get a ton of results that are not what I was searching, both in regular ebay search and in my store. Yesterday I put in a search which should have had maybe 15-20 results max, and it came back with 275,000+ results! It is showing anything with ANY word I am searching. Even within my own store, I can't look for something to do a sell similar, because it is pulling up hundreds of unrelated items, or showing me 0 results. 

I'm not sure how people can shop efficiently without just giving up and going elsewhere when they are getting everything under the sun showing in search. 

Is this just another glitch, or another "improvement"? 

[eburtonlab]

@downrightspecialkids 

This is one of my current gripes -- some time around end of May or early June the search algorithm changed and many searches that worked previously now appear to be returning lots of results that do not match some or even all of the keywords. If you use "best match" as your default sort order you might see some good results at the top of the sort, but if you use any other sort order it is apparent that something is terribly wrong.

The quickest workaround is to add a nonsense exclusion term to your search (using a minus sign, like -octopus). Adding that to your search terms entirely bypasses the "search expansion" feature that is having issues. That is not much help, though, if you are a seller concerned that users cannot find your items unless they know this trick. You also lose the benefit of close keyword matching, so if you are searching for 1990 Corolla parts, adding an exclusion term means that your search will not find '90 Corolla parts unless you change your search.

More details and some glaring examples of before and after here:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Ebay-item-search-results-flooded-with-unrelated-items...

[greg5000]

---

@downrightspecialkids wrote:

No matter what I have been searching for, I get a ton of results that are not what I was searching, both in regular ebay search and in my store. Yesterday I put in a search which should have had maybe 15-20 results max, and it came back with 275,000+ results! It is showing anything with ANY word I am searching. Even within my own store, I can't look for something to do a sell similar, because it is pulling up hundreds of unrelated items, or showing me 0 results. 

I'm not sure how people can shop efficiently without just giving up and going elsewhere when they are getting everything under the sun showing in search. 

Is this just another glitch, or another "improvement"? 

---

I'm not sure that eBay understands ... everyone doesn't have time to look through 275,000+ unrelated listings. 

In this case "More isn't Better."

Let's all repeat this together for eBay ...  More isn't Better.

[downrightspecialkids]

---

@eburtonlab wrote:

@downrightspecialkids 

This is one of my current gripes -- some time around end of May or early June the search algorithm changed and many searches that worked previously now appear to be returning lots of results that do not match some or even all of the keywords. If you use "best match" as your default sort order you might see some good results at the top of the sort, but if you use any other sort order it is apparent that something is terribly wrong.

The quickest workaround is to add a nonsense exclusion term to your search (using a minus sign, like -octopus). Adding that to your search terms entirely bypasses the "search expansion" feature that is having issues. That is not much help, though, if you are a seller concerned that users cannot find your items unless they know this trick. You also lose the benefit of close keyword matching, so if you are searching for 1990 Corolla parts, adding an exclusion term means that your search will not find '90 Corolla parts unless you change your search.

More details and some glaring examples of before and after here:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Ebay-item-search-results-flooded-with-unrelated-items...

---

The funny this is, not long ago ebay said they wouldn't be showing all results in search to make it a more pleasant buying experience where they don't have to weed through pages of listings, but this seems to be doing the exact opposite! 

Ugh! 

[eburtonlab]

@downrightspecialkids 

The funny this is, not long ago ebay said they wouldn't be showing all results in search to make it a more pleasant buying experience where they don't have to weed through pages of listings, but this seems to be doing the exact opposite!

I have noticed some obvious filtering of search results, primarily when sorting by "lowest first". In many cases there will be a note at the top of the sort:

"We removed some search results to show you the most relevant listings. View all results"

The number of "results found" in that case does not represent the number of results shown -- if you count the results shown it can be considerably less. If you follow that View all results link then you will see the same "results found" number, but more actual listings will be shown. This has caused some confusion -- since the number at the top does not change, many users think they are seeing the same results either way.

In addition, it is not clear to me what criteria eBay is using to determine which listings are "most relevant". In one recent case, a seller complained that their item, which showed near the top of a "best match" sort, did not appear to meet the "most relevant" criteria for a "lowest price" sort, and thus was hidden from the results unless the searcher followed the View all Results link (which many searchers do not bother to do).

I would have thought that the "best match" and "most relevant" would be using the same criteria, but apparently not, at least not in that case.