The whole point of search is for it to show the items you are looking for.
True, but part of that is that the buyer has to be able to specify what is being searched for to some degree. eBay has included some default assumptions based on what others have searched for and purchased in the past, but that can only go so far without additional information. Those assumptions do not always apply, and they can break down; different users often use the exact same keywords but have very different ideas of what results should be returned, and in some cases eBay may be returning results that are not well connected with the intended search.
If you ask for north America maps, the search will return any listing in the category North America Maps, which includes maps of North America but also any map of any specific part of that area. If you only want certain maps, you have to be able to specify which ones, and sellers have to also provide that information in those listings so buyers can use that information to find the right listings.
Most new buyers have no clue about refining searches and item specifics.
Most new buyers do not need to be experts in item-specifics to obtain some results when searching, and if the results do not match what the buyer is looking for, most new buyers will try a few things to see if the desired results are obtained.
An experienced seller can list an item in such a way that even the most inexperienced buyer can easily find it. And an experienced buyer can often find the listing of an inexperienced seller that does not include certain keywords or item-specifics. But an inexperienced buyer may have difficulty finding the listing of an inexperienced seller.
eBay is actually pretty good at divining what a user is searching for based on a few sparse or even misspelled keywords, but the more assumptions and exceptions are added to the rules, and the further eBay gets from simple text keyword matching, the greater the chances that the search will go wildly off track, particularly if the user is not searching for common items, or an unusual keyword is very similar to a much more popular keyword, or if users assume that keywords next to each other are grouped together when they are not (or vice versa).
Many current search problems are the result of old search rules breaking down when used in combination with the new category changes. The general rule -- if the search keywords match a category title, then show all the results of that category -- worked fairly well most of the time when there were many specific small categories. But now eBay has eliminated many small categories, and items that were in those small categories are now in much larger categories along with many other items, and the previous shortcut rule now returns many more items that are less related to the original search terms.
