eBay

onemixedbag · ‎10-10-2019

So I've noticed more and more that ebay's search results are not complete. A current example today is the following....If you do a search for "bee earrings" and sort from highest to lowest price, the most expensive pair they show is a pair for for $553.45 however if you do a search for "slane bee earrings", there is a pair for $1, 999.00. The first search of just "bee earrings" should include this listing of the pair for $1, 999.00 but it does not. I'm seeing this a lot with search results, that items aren't appearing when the exact words are listed in the title. Can someone please help me understand what is happening because as a buyer, I am missing items that aren't showing in search results and as a seller, I fear people are missing mine. TIA!

zamo-zuan · ‎10-10-2019

@onemixedbag wrote:
So I've noticed more and more that ebay's search results are not complete. A current example today is the following....If you do a search for "bee earrings" and sort from highest to lowest price, the most expensive pair they show is a pair for for $553.45 however if you do a search for "slane bee earrings", there is a pair for $1, 999.00. The first search of just "bee earrings" should include this listing of the pair for $1, 999.00 but it does not. I'm seeing this a lot with search results, that items aren't appearing when the exact words are listed in the title. Can someone please help me understand what is happening because as a buyer, I am missing items that aren't showing in search results and as a seller, I fear people are missing mine. TIA!

This has been going on for a long time and seems to be getting more common.

I just want you to know that you're not alone. I guarantee in a few minutes some people are going to come in here blaming it on something you did and say it's "never happened before".

But rest assured, you're not alone. Big sellers and small sellers have all experienced what you're seeing. It seems intentional by eBay at this point as it's gone on so long.

dhbookds · ‎10-10-2019

I think this is a case of ebay choosing the category results to show you. Using bee earrings highest to lowest, I am shown the earring category with top price of about $200 or so. If I switch to all categories, I get $5000 plus...... the more expensive stuff is in fine earrings diamonds, gemstones, etc..... Some also in vintage earrings and I'll bet some are in the bee category........

Most of us would agree, I think, that when a search term is used, ebay should NOT be choosing which category to show......but should be allowing searchers to choose which category they want to see via the left side suggestions.

nobody*s_perfect · ‎10-10-2019

eBay sometimes chooses to not show all results, but to show only the results from one selected category instead. They call this "implicit category navigation: and you can read an eBay staffer's exlanation of it in the final post in this thread:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Archive-Weekly-Chat-with-eBay/Weekly-Chat-with-the-eBay-Mobile-Team-Oc...

In your case, including "slane" in the search turns up very few results so you are shown all of them. But searching on just "bee earrings" turns up over 6000 results so eBay shows you only one category (earrings) unless you click on "All" in the far left in search results.

onemixedbag · ‎10-10-2019

My question then is why isn't "all" the default setting? How do they choose which categories to show if I haven't selected any specific ones?

zamo-zuan · ‎10-10-2019

I just want to add that on here a long time ago I posted screenshots of searching our own items, where it was sorted by price, and our item was still not showing (without any category issues).

In addition to showing it not showing up one time in search and showing up another time, I also posted the results of what happens when I hit "Show All Results" (because it claimed less relevant items were hidden).

After hitting show all, there was LESS total listings being shown!

These can be used as evidence that indeed items don't always appear even outside of catalog issues.

zamo-zuan · ‎10-10-2019

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Mortified-That-Lowest-Price-Sort-IS-NOT-LOWEST-PRICE/m-p/29223...

Here is the post if anyone is wondering

ittybitnot · ‎10-10-2019

How do they choose which categories to show if I haven't selected any specific ones?

Typically, they choose on the basis of where more SALES have occurred. Even if you go to the "advanced search" page, and choose All categories, it won't work. In the favor of a "good buyer experience" ebay shows what they want. Two different users on different devices will be shown different results depending on their internet browsing history, past purchases on the web, or even your buying habits using your c. card in physical stores.

eBay calls it....enhancing the buyer experience. LOL...AND by the way, eBay does not HIDE listing. They prefer to call it "electing not to show"....sounds so much better as an explanation for their AI manipulation of your eBay "experience".

dhbookds · ‎10-10-2019

@onemixedbag wrote:
My question then is why isn't "all" the default setting? How do they choose which categories to show if I haven't selected any specifi
@onemixedbag wrote:
My question then is why isn't "all" the default setting? How do they choose which categories to show if I haven't selected any specific ones?

They have predetermined the category.......I would guess based on "solds".......ie which category sold the most with that search.... Obviously, more expensive stuff isn't going to beat casual stuff in numbers sold, perhaps they think those interested in more expensive stuff would specifiy 18K, sterling, diamonds, etc.

It 's a stupid thing to do.......and I've been fighting it ever since they started doing it, but by now, I imagine it's not going to change.

nobody*s_perfect · ‎10-10-2019

@onemixedbag wrote:
My question then is why isn't "all" the default setting? How do they choose which categories to show if I haven't selected any specific ones?

As the eBay staffer noted in the thread that I linked to, ' The main intent for the feature is to help buyers find the results from the most relevant categories. Most of our buyers - especially those new to eBay - aren't that familair with our categories so they may not apply a filter themselves. We also found that for the "all categories" search, there are certain queries where buyers often struggle to find the results ..."

In other words, eBay thinks users are not smart enough to refine the searches for themselves.

nationalpawnshop · ‎10-10-2019

I still don't understand the logic of an eBay search.

We recently checked on one of our listings to try to find out why it wasn't selling when so many others were. We're selling a lot of 6 pencil sharpeners. When we ran a simple search of the entire title it came up with other listings but not ours. I then noticed all these others were for pencil "sharpener." No plural. I edited out that one letter S from the title and the description. Nothing else was changed but now it was showing up in searches...

eburtonlab · ‎10-10-2019

@onemixedbag

My question then is why isn't "all" the default setting?

Presumably eBay thinks that some users, particularly new ones unfamiliar with how categories are set up, will be overwhelmed if they are provided with too many results. eBay seems to think steering users into particular categories will lead to more sales in the long run. Who knows -- they may be right. They certainly have incentive to choose correctly as they will lose money otherwise, and they have access to a great deal of search and sales data to mine.

How do they choose which categories to show if I haven't selected any specific ones?

eBay says that the categories are based on where the most sales occur for the chosen keywords. Of course, once eBay starts steering those searches into those categories, sales in the unchosen categories inevitably drop, so it is not clear if or how the keywords are kept up to date, once chosen.

At one point eBay had a list of which keywords pointed to which categories, but much of the documentation has been removed from the site, unfortunately.

Here are some cached versions to give you an idea:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MvI3EXmvxiIJ:https://www.ebay.ca/pages/help/se...

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hm1avGrjJIYJ:https://www.ebay.ca/pages/help/se...

The best way to tell if a keyword or set of keywords will be steered into a particular category is to actually try searching using those keywords, and seeing where the search winds up once the page has finished loading completely. Sellers should try this when listing in new categories if they are concerned that searchers might not find their items using common searches.

Incidentally, if you want to bypass the "search expansion" feature and its implicit category navigation when you search, try adding a nonsense exclusion term to your search keywords, such as -octopus (that is a minus sign, followed by the word octopus). Doing that disables all the "search expansion" features for that search.