Active Listings Search Issue - Search matches full words only

[wellingnorth]

On the Manage Active Listings page in My Ebay if I search by for example 'title' and choose 'contains' from the drop down it seems to match only whole words rather than partial strings of text. 

So for example if I put 'thread' it finds one listing with 'thread' in the title, but if i try again and search for 'thre' it doesn't find any, whereas surely it should find the one with 'thread'

The same thing happens searching for 'custom label' +  'contains' - it only matches full words whereas you would think this might often contain a mixed string of text rather than full words separated by spaces.

[ccla3379]

I think the default searching is using words as tokens but try placing your word fragment inside double-quotes ("thre") I seem to remember using this method previously although it was a long while back.

Alternatively, where the number of listed items isn't huge, then increasing the number shown on the page and using browser-searching may be quicker.

I did a quick hunt for help pages on searching within the Seller side of eBay but couldn't spot any - I'll suggest it if the opportunity arises.

[wellingnorth]

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@ccla3379 wrote:

I think the default searching is using words as tokens but try placing your word fragment inside double-quotes ("thre") I seem to remember using this method previously although it was a long while back.

Alternatively, where the number of listed items isn't huge, then increasing the number shown on the page and using browser-searching may be quicker.

I did a quick hunt for help pages on searching within the Seller side of eBay but couldn't spot any - I'll suggest it if the opportunity arises.

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Thanks for the reply and for now I've been using browser search as you suggest which is basically fine.

Your suggestion about double quotes is interesting and does seem to work somewhat, but with limits - for example, searching for 'mismatched', if I put "mismatch" in quotes it finds it, "mism" in quotes also works, but I get no results for "match" nor "mis" in quotes. So as far I can see whatever is in quotes needs to be 4 characters minimum and search only finds it if they are at the start of a word.

[ccla3379 · Accepted solution]

Ah, that is interesting behaviour - I don't know but it is possible the quotes are forcing the search to go through the text chunk index and it is not uncommon for there to be a lower limit on the chunk size to keep the speed to be acceptable when run of very large datasets, and an index would probably only get used when text begins with the text provided.   This strays into the area of system tuning which becomes a trade-off when you have a billion users hitting it thousands of times a day.

One other method I forgot to mention, was to extract a report of your listed items (Reports -> Downloads), pop it into a spreadsheet and filter away 🙂

[wellingnorth]

Thanks for this, that's interesting that there may be a designed in reason for the behaviour - I hadn't really considered how a search like this might be a trade off between perfect results and server load.

[c-foreman-2008]

eBays New 2024 Active Listing Page 2024 Update.

The Countdown For Next Ending Items for Auctions is not on the page.

I cannot get the items that are finished soonest in the right order,  they are 5 or 6 down the list for the next to finish. I know how to customise the page, but it's simply not working properly.

I have to click on my item page that is finishing next and watch the time run down, then I see the item is ended before the clock on the watching page is finished.

Why the heck can't eBay sort things out before they launch new ideas onto us? It looks like eBay just bangs out ideas and lets sellers inform them of issues, but then again eBay takes no notice or listens to sellers anyway.

[ccla3379]

If this is the New Seller Hub - Manage active listings page  - the one with a single row of blobs, the last being All Filters which throws-up a right side panel of options which includes Status where I would probably expect to find the "about to end"-type filters. 

I don't use auctions very much myself so wouldn't have noticed but if they are missing then definitely use the Comments link near the top to let them know.

If I have misunderstood the page or issue you are having then please include an illustration to help clarify.