How come narrowing the search results ends up with more items displayed?

[ten_o_nine]

It's supposed to be the opposite, I was searching "w s george china" and received 431 results, when I added "plate" to search to narrow down "w s george china plate", I received 648 😅

[nobody*s_perfect]

In the first image, eBay is selectively showing you only one subcategory ("Decorative cookware...") but in the second set of Results, they're showing you All.

[ten_o_nine]

So they can pick and change categories as they want?, was just searching and did not change categories.

[eburtonlab]

eBay will often steer searches into particular categories based on the keywords used in the search.

[ten_o_nine]

Maybe this is the problem with this site, let search be search site wide, instead of the DI {Dumb Intelligence) they use, most successful companies use AI.

[eburtonlab]

let search be search site wide

If you want "All categories", once the search results load you can select "All categories" and search again to get that.

Right now users -- buyers -- are accustomed to being able to enter iPhone into search and finding actual iPhones to purchase rather than seeing vastly larger numbers of iPhone accessories, for instance, even though the accessory listings contain the same keywords and satisfy the literal search requirements.