I'm a software engineer, its broken unless you're considering search resultant queries to yield results as was the case 20+ years ago. Technology has come a very long way since then in resultant data sets.
They've seemingly removed heuristic searching aka: "Asassin" is now quite different than "Assassin" for example. Type "Asassin creed III" at the home page, look at the results. Now type "Assassin creed III" and wow, what a difference. You expect consumers to spell everything right? Expect them to "Drill down" on search criteria as if they were database administrators? Uh no and I mean uh no, not ever.
The entire reason search technology over the past twenty plus years has evolved is due to web users and content producers not knowing what is required to refine search results against an SQL oriented database. There's literally an entire industry that revolves around "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) and trust me, this isn't it.
One can speculate all forms of reasons as to why, I can tell you it used to work fairly decent.
It could be that eBay is undergoing a massive reconstruction of all things product related on the site which would beckon to ask why. It could be that they are working in a psychological fashion so as sellers give up it fits a timetable by which the entire service ends up catering to a different type of vendor clientele. It could be a handful's of other reasons but if I had to guess, it'd be the latter.
Why?
If reasons were plates how many would we care to stack on either the vendor or consumer side albeit still one stack. How many problems happen in transactions across the entire platform? How much product in reality should not even be sold more or less meet or exceed warrants of merchantability? How much "knock off" product is listed that breaches rights holders rights? How much product crosses international borders that is not to cross international borders? I could go on and on on making quite the long list of issues in shipping based commerce that didn't really exist before the online world exploded.
Do product creators want used product resold by unauthorized entities more or less at all?
We can take fulfillment too, Postal Service rates are only going to continue to rise. They contract with other couriers that raise prices beyond base regional delivery costing. The big guy on the block has moved away from the USPS, FedEx, UPS and others and will continue to do so performing their own contracted fulfillment creating jobs. Biggest hit carriers have had in quite sometime is Amazon performing fulfillment directly.
When one puts ever so many things together and looks at the future not to mention the very real chances of regulatory measures a smart business needs adjust to whats coming even if it hurts the now.
eBay has a globally recognized brand name and there are hordes of hard goods creators all over the world seeking outlets to move new, delisted and warehoused previous products. If I were ebay that's the target I'd be aiming at but in order for those big/medium sized product producers they must have a fair and level playing field. Not a one of em' going to consider eBay that as they are forced to compete against people searching thrift stores, garage sales, parts from the car garage they work at, or closeout houses on and on.
One might say just like US Politics have had a storm brewing for over 40 years and was predicted in the 1980's by numerous think tanks the same can be said of eCommerce albeit 20 years or anti-social media over the past 15 years. Just as we've an entire world and locally country who want believe their own facts vs real facts things begin to break and significant changes need be made.
Frankly its rather surprising eBay has not gone in a direction closer to the king of global ecommerce having folks send items to them, they do the work, folks get paid what they do and either like or not.
