eBay

somanypostcards · ‎05-07-2023

Today I did a search on Collectibles -> Postcards. eBay returned 8,000,000 Best Match results. When I sorted by Time: ending soonest, Time: newly listed, Distance: nearest first, and Price + Shipping: highest first, eBay also returned 8,000,000 results. But when I searched Price + Shipping: lowest first, eBay returned only 2,800 results with a message: "We’ve streamlined your search results to show you the best listings. See more results". At least when I clicked this link I did finally get 8,000,000 results.

2,800 listings is just 0.35% of all the postcards listed, just 1 for every 286 postcards listed. The initial 2,800 "best listings" showed NO listings under $1.00 and less than 240 listings less than $2.00. The 8,000,000 listings showed over 240 listings under $1.00, and I didn't even try to count all the listings under $2.00.

zamo-zuan · ‎11-15-2023

@eburtonlab wrote:
Sadly, most users don't have any clue how it works, or any idea they aren't seeing full results.

Which is why the users that do notice such problems should point them out directly to eBay, in addition to publicizing the problem on the boards and sharing the workarounds with other users.

Oh, I have certainly been doing that. This is one of the topics I had actually brought up with them when eBay had visited us on site in I believe 2019, and I had arranged a presentation for them of the issues we face. I'd met or discussed these problems with others on the leadership team/advocates/etc. Sadly it usually doesn't get anywhere. And as of this year, they had asked me for evidence of the issues, and I arranged it in > 10 folders of screenshots and eBay's own reports, and they have literally ghosted me. Which is extremely odd, considering the last thing one of them discussed with me was they got permission from me to contact me at any time if they needed anything else. So that tells me either they're not able to find the problems, or they found them but can't fix and aren't allowed to confirm them in writing.

@eburtonlab wrote:

At the time eBay consistently displayed a message at the top of the results when the filtering was happening. Confusingly, the number of results shown at the top of the page did not always change, although the actual results displayed did change with the sort order. And the results that were filtered out amounted to perhaps 20% of the total results in a typical search, not the 99+% that seems to happen now.

Only very recently has the filtering seemed to get really out of hand. I suspect that the problem is an unintended interaction between two entirely different "smart" search features, similar to the way the keyword substitution feature had a failure mode not that long ago that resulted in search keywords changing when navigating between pages of search results. In that case users searching for something like barber chair would go through the first page of their results and click the link for page two of the results and find themselves in the middle of a search for barbie chair instead, with no obvious way to undo the "correction".

Yep, and even back then, there was confusion on eBay's end as to if it was intended or not, and why it may be happening.

I suspect as they try to integrate more and more AI features, it has only hurt the search more and more, because as of 2018 when they began that mess is when search had truly taken a turn for the worst. The abundance of advertising changes during this time only makes it exponentially worse.

eburtonlab · ‎11-15-2023

So that tells me either they're not able to find the problems, or they found them but can't fix and aren't allowed to confirm them in writing.

There is always the possibility that reports of the problem have not quite reached the level needed to get eBay to act; if that is the situation, there is a chance that the next report will be the one that get the problem to the top of the "needs attention" list. One may hope.

After all, if only a few users on the community forums are complaining, and there is no clear drop in sales directly attributable to the issue, is it really a problem that needs fixing?

It can be tremendously frustrating to identify a seemingly glaring, obvious problem and point out what needs to happen to fix it, only to be ignored. Or worse, to be told reflexively that it is working as intended by folks that do not seem grasp the issue at all. I have been on both sides of that conversation at various times, rightly or wrongly. Increasingly I try to avoid making statements about how things are intended to work in favor of statements about how things actually do work (or don't work) and what can be done immediately to get around various issues so I can do the things that I intend.

I leave it to the philosophers to argue about whether a current feature of eBay is a faithful representation of a flawed design, or a poor implementation of an otherwise perfect design, or something in between those two extremes. It is not necessary to settle that question to get things done, thankfully.

I suspect as they try to integrate more and more AI features, it has only hurt the search more and more, because as of 2018 when they began that mess is when search had truly taken a turn for the worst.

Knowing how to "get around" AI -- interacting with AI effectively, but particularly in the sense of bypassing it entirely when necessary to get to the underlying non-AI functionality to actually get things done -- is likely to become an increasing valuable skill in many areas of life.

rlaybeast · ‎02-02-2024

True, but even worse, a shorter list can be made longer by the algorithm repeating items.

Not just a similar listing, same listing. I've had two copies of the same listing visible at once, hit 'like' on one, and the other's 'heart' goes black, and vice versa.

somanypostcards · ‎02-02-2024

Two problems noted today when searching for Valentine's Day postcards.

1) Search returned 24,000 listings with a default sort order of Best match. All the other sort orders returned 10,000 listings or less.

2) Sorting by ending soonest, newly listed, nearest first, and highest first all returned 10,000+ and no message to click to see more. Sorting by lowest first only returned 1,600 listings. The lowest postcard shown was a total cost of $1.99 ($.99 + shipping $1.00) and all the rest were $2 or higher, so NONE of the listings from $.25 - 1.98 were shown. At least there was a "streamlining" message to click to see more, which showed 10,000+.

Why does best match show 14,000 more listings than the other 5 sorts? Why doesn't sort by lowest first NOT show the lowest listings? Why does streamlining remove over 80% of the listings?

eburtonlab · ‎02-02-2024

Why does best match show 14,000 more listings than the other 5 sorts?

Lately when "Best Match" is the chosen sort method, the results shown include some keyword "near matches" or variations that are not shown in other sorts. It appears that the rules for what qualifies as a match can actually change with the sort order, at least in that case.

Why doesn't sort by lowest first show the lowest listings? Why does streamlining remove over 80% of the listings?

"Lowest first" is still broken -- at least for some keyword combinations. Possibly eBay is waiting for reports of specific searches to fix them on a keyword by keyword basis, so be sure to report the problematic searches directly to eBay using the "Tell us what you think" link on the search results page.