eBay Search Issues

[amricons]

eBay search has a lot of issues. For example if you type in Yoda bust you get about 1500+ results of which the most all are not a Yoda bust.  Best guess thee might be far less than 50 listed, but try to look at them, good luck. This condition seems to be happening across the board . We have had to stop buying because quick searches for specific items produce horrible results as even items not from the category end up in search.    Not long ago, a simple word search might produce 3-40 results which a buyer , like in our case can look at. Most searches  before the changes produced less than 10 when you look at collectibles for instance. Now you get search results without any focus. I know we do not have hours to comb the list. From buying a couple of items daily we have not bought anything in 2 weeks.   We wonder how other buyers are reacting to this. In any case, we talked to eBay today about this and actually had a CS go thru some of the search results to see in real time the issues.   Try it, Yoda bust had at last search 1551 listing,  99% which had relevance.

[collectfest]

agreed, my buying has ground to a halt. Besides issues in marbles and Christmas ornament my latest issue is mini dice.

search under collectibles just word dice comes up 123,152 items. Enter dice -die drops to 17,437. Die has no relevance to this buyer.

[redmodelt]

Yes even in eBay Motors! Even adding in quotation marks does not help. If I am looking for X I want to see X not everything under the sun. I am not going to buy everything under the sun so showing me those items is not going to trigger a sale. Yes I understand that some word can trigger other items to be shown, but come on! If I was looking for; Ford Model T coil, which is specific and even if it did show other coils, what would rubber hoses (for example) have to do with coils whose listing title isn't even related to the other 2 words. Ok maybe coil (coiled hose) might be somewhere in the description, just show me what is in the title.

[ekmadonna]

I am having massive issues with search and have just given up completely. Everything I search for comes up with a big fat zero when I know there has to be dozens to hundreds of what I am searching for. The BIG PROBLEM is the Left Side Filters are STUCK ON "Within 25 mi. of my zip code" and every time I change it it reverts back to within 25 miles? The other issue is my button is FROZEN or GRAYED OUT when I try and check off  "SEE ALL" ?? So I have finally just quit searching for stuff. It is sad how complicated they have made search to the point of making half the site invisible.

[redmodelt]

Some of the stuff gets saved in the cache memory, search history etc in your computer. You might try cleaning that up and see if that helps.

[eburtonlab]

If you notice your search producing lots of results that do not seem to match your keywords, try putting one of your keywords in quotes, like this:

"yoda" bust

That should force eBay to find literal matches of your keywords rather than finding close synonyms, or using whatever faulty algorithm eBay is currently relying on to return those near-miss results.

So rather than trying to comb through 1500 results, try to narrow your search further using other techniques.

eBay has recently rearranged some categories in Collectibles, and removed many of the smaller categories. As a result, a search that might have been steered into a small category is now steered into a more general category, and the keyword may no longer be applied correctly after the category switch. The original idea made a certain amount of sense -- if you are searching for harry potter dvd, the search is automatically steered into the dvd category, and all results with harry potter in the title are returned. Sounds reasonable. Now imagine that there no longer is a dvd category, just a general category for movies, so a search for harry potter in that category turns up many non-dvd results after the category switch. So you may have to use a "format" filter to choose dvd rather than relying on using that term as a keyword.

[eburtonlab]

The BIG PROBLEM is the Left Side Filters are STUCK ON "Within 25 mi. of my zip code" and every time I change it it reverts back to within 25 miles?

Are you using Safari? I understand that many Safari users have been having problems with eBay filter options since a past browser update.

It might be worth trying another browser to search eBay to see if that makes a difference. If that works, you might want to try erasing your eBay cookies in your original browser -- it is possible that a corrupt cookie could be causing issues for you.

If the problem is not with your browser, are you using a bookmark or a saved search to begin your search? It is possible that your Item location settings are part of the search URL, and if you reload that saved or bookmarked search, you may be reapplying those settings each time.

Alternatively, you could try searching from the Advanced Search page -- the filters there seem to work differently than the filters on the search results page, and you may have better results that way.

[eburtonlab]

I was looking for; Ford Model T coil, which is specific and even if it did show other coils, what would rubber hoses (for example) have to do with coils whose listing title isn't even related to the other 2 words.

eBay Motors searches are complicated by the fact that many automotive items have lots of item-specifics, mostly listing all the models of vehicles that the item fits -- which, you can imagine, for a thing like a rubber gasket or a bearing could potentially be thousands of vehicles. If your search keywords appear anywhere among those item specifics -- hoses often come wound in coils -- that item will appear in your search results. Which is another reason to use item specific filters in conjunction with your search keywords to narrow your search, particularly if you are seeing items that do not appear to be related to your keywords.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=model+t+%22coil%22&_sacat=10073&LH...

[eburtonlab]

my latest issue is mini dice.

search under collectibles just word dice comes up 123,152 items. Enter dice -die drops to 17,437. Die has no relevance to this buyer.

"mini dice" in Collectibles:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/1/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=%22mini+dice%22

Alternatively, a slightly more general search for "mini" dice:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=%22mini%22+dice&_sacat=1&LH_TitleDesc=0&_odkw=%22mini...

Or for non-mini "dice" -- should be roughly equivalent to your dice -die search, though yours will exclude more results (those that contain die) :

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=%22dice%22&_sacat=1&LH_TitleDesc=0&_odkw=+dice&_osaca...

[coolections]

eBay search is one of the best. You have to learn to use it to the best ability for what you want. On the left side of the screen gives you many options. When you first type yoda bust Ebay does not have a clue what you are really wanting other than yoda. Use the left side of the screen and you can narrow it down to the exact bust you are looking for. The best place to start it click US only. The default is ALL categories, thus so many results. Pick the categories you want and go from there. Very easy process and you will be thrilled when you use the tools Ebay provides you to search.

[coolections]

@ekmadonna 

Clear your cache and previous searches and web sites. It is your computer.

[luckythewinner]

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@amricons wrote:

For example if you type in Yoda bust you get about 1500+ results of which the most all are not a Yoda bust.  Best guess thee might be far less than 50 listed, but try to look at them, good luck. T

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eBay seems to have programmed in a bunch of keywords substitution - it sure seems like Yoda is being switched out for Star Wars.

You can fix this by putting Yoda in quotes to indicate an exact match. Search for "yoda" bust instead of yoda bust and it returns 49 results that look reasonably correct. 

I'm not saying that what eBay is doing is sensible; I'm just offering you a way to get the results that you are looking for. 

[postingid7659]

eBay motors has always been horrible.  I get a specific older car part I want to see what it's sold for in the past, I search year-make-part, I get about 1500 irrelevant results and 15 that I actually want to see. 

I find selecting "used" often helps but if you wanted a new reproduction part you want to see that type of part, not light bulbs and fan belts and car covers.  

[ekmadonna]

No, I don't use SAFARI but MOZILLA FIREFOX

[redmodelt]

I find that by adding "-fits" to the search box takes a lot of unneeded stuff out of what is shown. Once you ask to see part for X car, any listing that has that car listed in the item fits specifics will be shown even if it is just a word in the description when you do a search. Sure you may miss a couple of listings, but over all it works great.