Search - is anyone else finding it as useless as me?

[ian_w42]

In the past few months I have found the search function to become nearly useless.

I often search for specific computer hardware components, I usually use the exact model number, brand name, memory size etc in the search. An example would be "NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB " but applies to every search I make.

Nearly all of the results will be irrelevant and not related to the search terms at all. Different brands, different models etc. Most of the results will not contain any of the keywords I searched for.

You can of course refine results using the filter checkboxes but it's annoying and doesn't even cover every thing you might be searching for, the options are quite out of date.

I know ebay is "streamlining" search results but this is beyond that, it also does not seem to listen to quotes to force inclusion of certain keywords.

[date80211]

I suggest you've been misled and this has greatly less to do with data supplied by vendors, than the way eBay chooses - and forces us - to process that data.

'eBay's search can only be as good as the data supplied by sellers…' simply isn't true, as everyone with any knowledge of data processing was taught in lesson 102, if not 101.

Not long ago, we could use standard (prolly HTML; I don't mind) search instructions to include or exclude various terms. Try that now and see where you get.

[eburtonlab]

'eBay's search can only be as good as the data supplied by sellers…' simply isn't true, as everyone with any knowledge of data processing was taught in lesson 102, if not 101.

By that, I mean that if you search for a red widget on eBay, eBay will return listings where sellers include those specific terms in the title or item-specifics, whether or not the items being sold are red or even widgets at all. Not all sellers are making every effort to ensure that the keywords that appear in their listings are limited to appropriate ones, as they should. Whether any specific search succeeds depends on the efforts of eBay programmers, individual sellers, and the user searching.

Not long ago, we could use standard (prolly HTML; I don't mind) search instructions to include or exclude various terms.

Do you mean regexp? eBay uses its own syntax, but you should still be able to include or exclude various terms. If you use the Advanced Search page you can do that using various fields, but many of the same results can be obtained by using specific search commands directly in the search bar of a standard search -- for instance, by using a minus sign to exclude a keyword, or quotes around words or phrases to get exact results in order with no substitutions or intervening keywords.

No wildcards any more since 2012, though, unfortunately.

If you are having problems searching and want help, please provide an example of a search that is not working and describe how you think it is failing; someone may be able to suggest an alternative search that better meets your needs.

[coldshield]

Generic and irrelevant search results... Unbelievable how irritating and honestly it has sent me to Amazon, Gumtree, Cex and others to look for what I want and ready to buy.
I am disabled and cannot collect, yet 90% of the wheelchairs that I looked for and get displayed are for COLLECT in person only.   There is no built-in filtering button, and the advice users suggested in online chats do not work. 
Also as the other responders point out,  you want say a Sony or Philips gadget  for example but the results you get may not include any of your brand but hundreds of others. 

Searching databases is one of the very very early bits of software development which eBay must surely be a top master of by now.. I will improve and increase business in my view. 

[a1once]

I was looking for Adidas Trainers. Tried Amazon as well as on here. Got about two lines of Adidas and then a few lines of what was probably Chinese drop-shipping trainers - nothing to do with Adidas. So, not too much better on there.

[ralphs-retro]

It's gash

Just like click and collect

And just like the new Jamaican beach bar call centre 😳😂😂😂

[date80211]

Other views abound and personally, I think that even if your 'red widget…' example is wholly true, it moves too far away from ian_w42's 'Nvidia…' problem to be helpful herre.

I just searched on 'solar panel' and 'solar panel kit battery' several times each, and got answers not only different, but apparently wrong.

Is it not your belief that any item listed as '2x 200w Solar Panels' should be found by both 'solar panel' alone and by 'solar panel kit'?

Still, '2x 200w Solar Panels' was not returned from 'solar panel' alone…

What are your thoughts, please?

[date80211]

Further, '30W Solar Panel Trickle Battery Charger For Caravan Car Van Boat RV Kit' did not appear in my cited searches.

What are your thoughts, please?

[date80211]

Further, when I tried to bar 'trickle' from my search, eBay refused to allow that.

I tried four formats:
solar panel -trickle

solar panel -Trickle

solar panel -"trickle"

solar panel -"Trickle"

All still threw several 'Trickle' items into the results.

What did I do wrong, please?

[eburtonlab]

Is it not your belief that any item listed as '2x 200w Solar Panels' should be found by both 'solar panel' alone and by 'solar panel kit'?

If an item is listed as 2x 200w Solar Panels then it would most likely be found in a search of Solar Panels (with an "s") but not necessarily in a search for Solar Panel or Solar Panel kit.

eBay may provide results with variations of keywords (such as panels versus panel), but if you are using quotes or exclusions, eBay will only return exact literal matches for your keywords. But keep in mind that results you see that do not have the keywords in the title may have keywords in the item-specifics.

It may also matter what category the item is listed in.

[eburtonlab]

Further, when I tried to bar 'trickle' from my search, eBay refused to allow that.

That search seems to work for me and provide results:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=Solar+Panel+kit+-trickle+&_sacat=0

In what way is that search failing, exactly? What is eBay not allowing you to do?

[smarts-gaming]

I often am looking for certain video games. Whats really been annoying me lately is

1. Some games for some reason are not liked by ebays search, and it will say "we have streamlined your results" to include thousands of just random video games. Im literally searching a specific game on a specific console, and it just streamlines it to anything to do with videogames. Therefore some games it is impossible to find on ebay. Its rare but it does happen, no idea why. 

2. The search is incredibly *bleep*. A search for Kirbys Dream Land, will not bring up listings labelled Kirby's Dream Land, just because of the single apostrophe. That means you have to do two searches, one without and one with the apostrophe. This goes for any game that has an apostrophe in it, which is many. Why cant ebays search discern that someone searching for Kirbys is obviously also looking for Kirby's? Its the same word! This surely effects buyers being able to find what they want on a large scale, and it raises the dilemma of wether you should use the apostrophe or not on your listing, knowing youll be cutting off whoever searches the opposite. 

3. Looking at sold listings and sorting by ended recently displays the listings in the wrong order. It can often go from 11th of November, to 18th of August, then back to 6th of November, etc. 

4. Again a complaint about the search being too *bleep*. If you search MegaDrive, it will not bring up listings that have Mega Drive in them (with a space). And vice versa. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt, but it appears to be completely random which ones it shows and which it doesnt. A search engine in 2025 should surely be able to work out that they are the same item and combine the search? 

I often feel I have to do multiple searches just for a single item just to make sure ive actually seen them all. That shouldnt be the case in my opinion. A search engine worth its salt would take your enquiry and show all relevant listings, even if they have slightly different grammar or spelling. Its like they are still using a search engine built in 2002. 

[helva56]

So a year on and it hasn't got any better, rather the opposite, I have almost given up with the useless searches as it just churns out more and more totally unrelated items and not what you asked it to search for, ai is taking over everything and it has no idea about anything connected to reality.

among my futile searches I have one simply defined "Two Man Chainsaw",  so on a daily basis it tells me it has found "new items" relative to my search,,, then shows an action man kids doll, and other unconnected items, it repeats this every day claiming it has yet again found "new items".

if I ignore that and type "two man chainsaw" into the search bar, it comes up with over a 1000 items, none of which are two man chainsaws. including items such as ,,postcards, stickers,badges,sweatshirts, bedding sets,keyfobs, mostly from china sellers, filtering to UK only removes all but 405 of these but still nothing that is a two man chainsaw. 

the same is repeated with a search for just about anything, pages of unrelated items and not what you asked for.

ai is pretty much a hyped up search engine that just accesses incorrect information and spews it out over and over again, never realizing or aware of it's blatant inaccuracies.

which isn't really intelligent at all is it.

[555njp]

The old eBay search (12 years ago) would have found all the scenarios you describe. So if you typed “Screwdriver” you’d see every single listing with that word in it.

Unfortunately now, search is so heavily manipulated to thrust often irrelevant promoted items in front of a buyer that many more relevant listings are not found.

We have a similar issue to the MegaDrive search. We sell TurboGold Wood screws and sometimes searching Turbo Gold misses TurboGold and vice versa. We have also found recently that sometimes the only way to find certain items is literally to duplicate the title word for word, otherwise, even with say four out of five keywords entered, the item remains hidden. Probably as we no longer promote.

I raised this issue in the weekly chat some time ago and was basically told search is working fine, when clearly by the number of people complaining it is not!

And yes, agree with searching sold listings. It always defers to ‘relevant’ rather than ‘recent’, as does feedback for that matter but at least you can select ‘recent’ for feedback checks.

Another annoyance with allegedly sold items is listings that the seller ended often show as green/sold when in fact they didn’t actually sell.
You only find out when you click the sold list listing and see “the seller ended this listing on xx/xx/xx as the item is no longer available”!
Not very helpful if trying to gauge the viability of a product.

[eburtonlab]

@smarts-gaming 

Some games for some reason are not liked by ebays search, and it will say "we have streamlined your results" to include thousands of just random video games.

"Streamlining" or filtering removes results from your search, and happens when using "Price plus shipping: lowest first" sort order (or the UK equivalent). 

A search for Kirbys Dream Land, will not bring up listings labelled Kirby's Dream Land, just because of the single apostrophe. That means you have to do two searches, one without and one with the apostrophe. This goes for any game that has an apostrophe in it, which is many. Why cant ebays search discern that someone searching for Kirbys is obviously also looking for Kirby's?

By default, eBay will treat most items with and without an apostrophe the same -- but that does not work if you are using advanced search features like quotes or exclusions, since those bypass  keyword substitution. You can try searching without using exclusions or quotes, like this:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=kirbys+dreamland&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_sop=10

If you want to use exclusions and search for substitute keywords, then things get trickier:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=%28kirbys%2Ckirby%27s%29+%28dreamland%2Cdream-land%29+-heated...

Looking at sold listings and sorting by ended recently displays the listings in the wrong order. It can often go from 11th of November, to 18th of August, then back to 6th of November, etc.

Sold listings are sorted by ending date, which is not always the same as the sold date if the item is a multiple quantity listing or the seller is using the out-of-stock feature.

[eburtonlab]

@555njp 

The old eBay search (12 years ago) would have found all the scenarios you describe. So if you typed “Screwdriver” you’d see every single listing with that word in it.

You can still do that, if you want to. This will return results in any category with the exact term screwdriver in the title or item-specifics. There are a lot of them, though. More than you can actually look at, since eBay will only let you see the first 10,000 results of any sort:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=%22screwdriver%22&_sacat=0&_sop=10

We sell TurboGold Wood screws and sometimes searching Turbo Gold misses TurboGold and vice versa.

Try putting TurboGold Wood in the title, and Turbo Gold Wood in the item-specifics if you are concerned that some users searching one or the other term might not see your listing when using advanced search features.

[555njp]

Ok, thanks, worth a try.

[555njp]

Sorry, hit reply too soon!

I see you put screwdriver in quotes to get all results, but I guess most buyers won’t do that. 
The example I was testing albeit a few months ago now, was for one of my own listings on my private account. 
I was selling a 1950s vintage Stanley, wooden handled screwdriver. No matter what combination of key words I put in (without quotes though) I couldn’t find the listing…! And unsurprisingly it had no views or interest, even though other similar ones were selling and mine was cheaper!

I literally had to mirror my description to find the listing.

In the end I cut the title back to Vintage Stanley Screwdriver and put all the details in the description. Only then did it pick up views and sell.

On this account, sometimes I get loads of views and an item sells within hours of uploading, but then I might sell similar using the exact same template but get no views/interest and the item hangs about for weeks…!

I appreciate eBay’s customer base has fallen and changed a lot in the last few years but it certainly used to be far more consistent and without an apparent pattern of one week in three where we seem to be invisible which is likely linked to not promoting anymore.

I will try changing the description slightly in item specifics as you suggest though, certainly worth a go even though search/visibility both seem sporadic.

Thanks for your help.

[smarts-gaming]

I really appreciate the good advice, its clear that you have a very in depth understanding of ebays search system! I will try and implement what you have said as long as it doesnt consume too much of my time setting up all the extra parameters. 

The issue remains though that 99% of ebay searchers are not going to know of or utilise any of these and neither should they have to. And the streamlined results must be broken, because I even had it again just a moment ago where a search for a very specific game and system said "we have streamlined your results" and then included thousands of irrelevant ones. If its only supposed to remove listings, then its 100% broken, because the only listings it seems to remove is what im actually looking for! 🤣 thanks for the help. 

[eburtonlab]

I see you put screwdriver in quotes to get all results, but I guess most buyers won’t do that.

Most buyers probably don't want to see every listing with screwdriver in the title or item-specifics in every category; but that is what you specifically asked for, so I was showing you how to get it.

I was selling a 1950s vintage Stanley, wooden handled screwdriver. No matter what combination of key words I put in (without quotes though) I couldn’t find the listing…! And unsurprisingly it had no views or interest, even though other similar ones were selling and mine was cheaper!

I literally had to mirror my description to find the listing.

You may have listed in the wrong category for your keywords. Hard to say now, as I do not see that listing among current or active listings in your account, or in your feedback.

On this account, sometimes I get loads of views and an item sells within hours of uploading, but then I might sell similar using the exact same template but get no views/interest and the item hangs about for weeks…!

That may have had more to do with the actual demand for such items than it had to do with search, though. Perhaps there was one very interested buyer who bought your first item, then the next buyers in line were not quite as interested as the first. Or perhaps those buyers found substitutes for your item.

Hard to say without a specific example to search for.

If a seller is clever, the seller can find a way to make it easy for buyers to find the seller's item, even if the buyers are not very clever.

If a buyer is clever, the buyer can find a seller's item even if the seller has used the "wrong" keywords or listed in the "wrong" category.

If eBay is clever, eBay can make it easy for buyers to find sellers' items and for sellers to list items so that they can be found, even if buyers and sellers are not particularly clever.

If no one is clever, then buyers never find sellers' items.

As a seller, I would suggest searching for your own items the way you think a potential buyer might search -- using general keywords rather than copying your entire title into the search field. See how many results turn up in that general search, and where (or if) your item turns up in the sort when sorting various ways. See how your listing stacks up against other listings when viewed in the search results. Then look at sold results for the last ninety days and figure out how long it should take for your item to be sold if all the items priced less than yours sell first at the same selling rate as the sold items, and if no new items are listed.

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

I searched today for 50 off cardboard boxes 9" 6" 6"

I got loads that werent that size in the results.

For those that were they were mostly multi option results where I had to put in details for the box to get a price.

I then had to step through the results saving the cheapest as I went.

This is very tedious.

I just want results that show the cheapest for the size and quantity I input.

Another pain is sponsored results that dont match the search criteria.

A waste of my time and the advertisers money.