eBay

siamjane8 · ‎07-19-2022

A friend just sent me a screen shot with these eBay search results for a 1969 Mercury cyclone car part. This has been going on for months and has not been resolved. You can't tell me that eBay search is working as intended! No wonder sales are down. eBay hardly ever shows relevant results! Search was for c9gy-16164-a. A very common ford part numbering system. It is the same on phone app and desktop results. eBay needs to do something.... Anything at this point about it's search engine!

eBay results:

Google results:

luckythewinner · ‎07-19-2022

My search on eBay for c9gy-16164-a (both with quotes and without quotes) returns one listing for a Mercury Cyclone part.

Are you saying there are more listings on eBay with this part number that search is not finding?

Or are you just complaining that the non-matching results ("Results matching fewer words") do not match the one word you typed?

my-cottage-books-and-antiques · ‎07-19-2022

Or, a potential buyer could add the word "mercury" to the search string....

m60driver · ‎07-19-2022

Personally, I would not have a complaint with those Ebay search results. But yes, Google search is often more productive for finding things on Ebay than using Ebay's own search engine. Ebay's own search engine often needs more specific and additional terms used in a search than does Google's. And then there are the differences between using Ebay's search engine while using a cell phone as compared to searching using a desktop. Just another fine example of why Ebay's corporate moniker is spelled "eBay" in order to highlight that Ebay hires the B-team.

meme6253 · ‎07-19-2022

All of that creates a MESS we don't need!

meme6253 · ‎07-19-2022

What a MESS!!, But Nice Bumpers On The Merc!

siamjane8 · ‎07-19-2022

Lucky- the complaint is that ebay results matching fewer words show naked women instead of ford parts. Yes that is my complaint. There are thousands of other ford/mercury parts with part #s only 1 digit off that logically are a better "results matching fewer words" than naked woman. Notice that those listings are all promoted also so the algorithm is forcing irrelevant PL in leu of actually real results that might be close- at least a car part.

Did you notice how google some how magically did not show naked woman but instead pages of ford and mercury car part listings even though they were not a perfect match.

This is effecting sales- people can not find what they are looking for on ebay even though it is probably there.

stainlessenginecovers · ‎07-19-2022

"Results matching fewer words" will show up for most anything searched that only returns a few items. Because a person inputs something very specific, it will do this on most anything.

Does NOT affect search as the item available (only 1) IS shown.

siamjane8 · ‎07-19-2022

I think all of this shows finally that the ebay search engine Cassini is just not effective. For years they have been setting up the search to weigh so heavily on item specifics in order to build a catalog but it does not work. Item specifics can be spammed and that throws it off. The search completely ignores all the actual keywords that a potential buyer types in the box and shows "who knows what".

The other day a person i met at the store asked me why cant ebay just show me what i type in the box? Every other site just simply matches up what I type- thats what i want to see!

I agreed and said I have no idea why its so bad.

Their learning AI is garbage- I kind of wonder if one of the problems is that it "remembers " all the incorrect impressions that it shows people and realizes they were not clicked on so it then suppresses the listing and then tries different results... Almost like it is feeding itself poison? Garbage in garbage out.

yuzuha · ‎07-19-2022

@siamjane8 wrote:
A friend just sent me a screen shot with these eBay search results for a 1969 Mercury cyclone car part. This has been going on for months and has not been resolved. You can't tell me that eBay search is working as intended! No wonder sales are down. eBay hardly ever shows relevant results! Search was for c9gy-16164-a. A very common ford part numbering system. It is the same on phone app and desktop results. eBay needs to do something.... Anything at this point about it's search engine!

It is working as intended. The search engine has no idea what a "c9gy-16164-a" is because you have given it no other helpful words to help narrow down the search. When it can't find a c9gy-16164-a, it starts looking around for other items that have similar strings of numbers and letters in the title, and what it found for "Results matching fewer words" were those photos.

This could very easily be solved by simply adding the word "Mercury" so the search engine knows that what you are looking for has to do with cars.

bryo_3145 · ‎07-19-2022

Just think of the minors' "kids" that are pulling this kind of stuff up. Our society is so messed up! Unfortunately, it's all out there. You would think with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Ebay and other major corporations, with all the money they have. "Do they care?" or "Is it all about the money?" They would be affording a watch dog system to protect our children from a sick, corrupted, world society.

luckythewinner · ‎07-19-2022

@siamjane8 wrote:
Lucky- the complaint is that ebay results matching fewer words show naked women instead of ford parts. Yes that is my complaint. There are thousands of other ford/mercury parts with part #s only 1 digit off that logically are a better "results matching fewer words" than naked woman. Notice that those listings are all promoted also so the algorithm is forcing irrelevant PL in leu of actually real results that might be close- at least a car part.
Did you notice how google some how magically did not show naked woman but instead pages of ford and mercury car part listings even though they were not a perfect match.
This is effecting sales- people can not find what they are looking for on ebay even though it is probably there.

If your chief complain is that Google is better than eBay at showing items the buyer did NOT search for, you'll get no argument from me.

As for affecting sales, I gues that would depend upon how your buyers think. I know that my buyers who are looking for Beatles LPs that are not "Rubber Soul" do not search for "Rubber Soul". They search for "Beatles LP".

whatmorefabric · ‎07-19-2022

I think that both Amazon and Etsy are worse in searches.

If I Plug a certain fabric into Amazon, I get everything from T shirts to dog dresses before the fabric.

Etsy is not much better. I can put in the exact title of a fabric and it pulls up everything but the fabric.

This is what they are calling browsing in order to get customers to see lots of different items that they might like and has nothing to do with Ebay, but rather on line selling trends

devon@ebay · ‎07-19-2022

@siamjane8 wrote:

A friend just sent me a screen shot with these eBay search results for a 1969 Mercury cyclone car part. This has been going on for months and has not been resolved. You can't tell me that eBay search is working as intended! No wonder sales are down. eBay hardly ever shows relevant results! Search was for c9gy-16164-a. A very common ford part numbering system. It is the same on phone app and desktop results. eBay needs to do something.... Anything at this point about it's search engine!

eBay results:

Google results:

Hey @siamjane8! I have these listings reported to the correct team as well as I let them know about the results that are given when trying to look for the car parts with the part number associated with it.

Devon,

gdiesel70 · ‎07-19-2022

Ok.

Google and Cassini are two different search engines though.

I just searched for “c9gy-16164-a” and there's one active listing for that term. I don’t see the problem, unless there’s multiple listings and eBay is only showing one. Are you saying there should be more than one listing for that part? I don’t know.

Google doesn’t have anything indexed from eBay for that term.