Unfortunately the decision made many years ago to base the search on item specifics instead of title keywords ( searcher's intent), has led us down this path. Obviously search algorithms are very complicated..... but it always comes back to "why does ebay show me PL and unrelated items to my search while google search shows me what i wanted to see- and most of the items are actual ebay listings that ebay search did NOT show me."
Its sad the think but ebay's search is not designed to connect buyers and sellers with the most accurate results..... it has been designed to maximize the profits for ebay, and that comes from PL fee ads and selling the user data to third party companies.
There are many of us out there that still think showing people all the options for what they searched for organically would drive a much higher customer experience and satisfaction level and keep users coming back for more.
What would you rather see?- a comprehensive list of what you actually searched for - with options of various sellers to choose from to make an educated purchase?, or promoted listing carousels with items that have no connection with what you wanted?... and they will cost more because of sellers having to pass the 5-15% promoted listing fees along to the buyer!
What i am often seeing now is that the search results are so bad and return nothing.... but then in one of the PL carousels, you can start to see an actual variety of what you wanted!!!!!! They are suppressing organic results so that sellers must promote- but that is not how people search so the end result is people think that its not on ebay when it really is!
