Serious Technical Glitch - Search Not Working, Items not Visible

[bluelight116]

If you search you get results but you can not see them. Also you can not see your own listings....

This is a very serious technical glitch. 

[style_wise]

Yes, there are a few people complaining so there may be a glitch.

I shopped with Search this morning, and can see one of your items when I search for it. That said, eBay T&Cs do say they might not to show your items in Search!

[bluelight116]

Be happy the error hasn't reached you yet 😂

[kat@ebay]

Hi @bluelight116 ,

Thank you for your post.

When we perform the search it is bringing up results. Try deleting recent cache and cookies to see if that helps and can try from a different browser.

Thank you,

Kat

[bluelight116]

I tried Chrome and Edge, same thing happening. I get results back on every 3rd-4th search and they stay. But the other times they come for a second, you can see them and boom, they are gone, no results page.

[kat@ebay · Accepted solution]

Hi @bluelight116 ,

That does seem strange. Checked with tech for the search to be done on your account and it showed the results like the ones I posted below. Do you have any ad blockers on your browsers that could be preventing the results from showing initially.

Thank you,

Kat

[bluelight116]

Hi kat@ebay   

I paused AdBlock and the results are showing now. So far, so good. Thank you. 🙂

I think your team should know this as many people are using AdBlock and won't be aware of this. 🙂

[ccowen1]

It is totally unusable at the moment and clearing cookies makes no difference. 
The search results appear for a few seconds then disappear to be replaced with unwanted *bleep* like "Picks for You" etc. 
I don' t wqnt to see any of this on my search results. No amount of changing views, or clicking on "see more results" fixes it as it just breaks again straight away when you try to scroll down, or clikc on anything.

I have tried multiple machines, different browsers and cleared my cache twice. Still broken

[bluelight116]

Hi @ccowen1 

Cookies and history didn't help me.

What helped is I paused the AdBlock in Chrome / stopped in Edge and I can see the results.

Do you use any adblocker extension?

[gusiks2012]

Hi! I spent more than an hour racking my brain and fingers! Then I remembered about the Community. I came here and it helped! But eBay should have warned me in big, bold letters! I can imagine how many people are complaining right now! And how many people can't find what they need in search results! This will seriously slow down trading!!! Long live advertising on eBay!

[doctorwho16]

Yes I have the same problem - AGAIN.

This happened a while ago and I opened a thread about it. It was solved but then happened again (and was solved again).

Now happening yet again. eBay really need to sort this out PERMANENTLY.

[collecting_the_hobby]

I am having the same issue. Although when I click on search multiple times the normal search item view would show up. I did notice when it showed up there was a slight frame nudge before the search view stabilized. This is definitely a massive technical issue especially for store subscribers that have auctioning ending. 

[insidethe93]

I suspect this is the glitch I've been having most of today but witho me the search results appear for a fraction of a second then disappear, leaving the only thing on the page being "items you viewed recently" and "sponsored items".

I've spent an hour wrestling with it. Only managed to buy 6 items, which should've been do-able in minutes as when searching I knew the manufacturer name and item name i.e. looking very specifically. Kept having to repeat the search as results would appear for a fraction of a second only, turning it into a fairground shooting gallery game - quick, click before it vanishes. Had to "divide" the screen into sections and methodically click in that area without stopping to look at the item shown.

After that I gave up. I would've given up earlier except that the items are rare and I dared not wait.

The fact that more than one eBayer has had this means it's a problem at eBay's end. Though I do understand why eBay's initial response tends to be "it's not us, it's you", as sometimes it is.

Hope the glitch will be fixed soon!

[geoffrey-0160]

I have just started encountering the same problem.  You have obviously alterted something and it is causing Ebay live (which I want to switch off by the way) to block all results.  Looks like I'll have to go off somewhere else.

[eburtonlab]

Try turning off just the "ABP filters" under the Advanced menu if you are using Ad Block Plus. 

Those -- and the equivalent "Anti-circumvention" filters from Ad Block -- have caused problems in the past, triggering on promoted listings, generally slowing down the search results page from loading, and occasionally when eBay changes things to make it harder for users to block promoted listings, wiping out non-promoted listings as well.

[insidethe93]

Thanks, very informative.

Unfortunately it's an arms race between websites and those who provide anti-ad software to include ways to counter a site's defences.

If a site is very ad-crammed then few visitors would want to disable their software and they might, especially on sites that seem to have other "glitches" too, shop elsewhere while waiting for their next anti-ad software update.

I read while trying to do some research on this that sites aren't necessarily deliberately trying to force people to disable blockers. Some sites do so deliberately by, say, greying out the page and imposing a large message 'you can't enter this site unless you do' (arguably counterproductive unless to that site advertising more important to it than having its content read). Some sites compromise and plead but let you in if you insist.

The silly thing is that if sites were more reasonable in how many ads they showed, more people would surf without anti-ad software. There's a reason why such software was developed, and why it proliferated according to how many ads people could tolerate.

[eburtonlab]

In eBay's case, I think the issue is specifically related to sponsored listings in search results.

Ad blockers try to block various kinds of ads, and sponsored listings could be considered to be ads. 

eBay does not want to make it easy for folks to block sponsored listings, so eBay makes sponsored listings look like regular organic listings. And eBay also makes organic listings look more like sponsored listings to further confuse the issue.

Ad blockers try to block ads. "Anti-circumvention" filters try to block things that go out of their way to not look like ads, but that are really ads. Sometimes "anti-circumvention" filters block things that are not ads at all -- like search results on eBay -- without intending to.

Whether eBay has changed something, or an ad blocker has changed the rules used, the upshot can be slow-loading search results, or even entirely missing search results.

The "arms race" analogy is quite apt.

[insidethe93]

Thanks. Again, informative, thank you.

We're not quite living in small cells surrounded by walls of screens constantly showing noisy ads and if you try to look away you're punished by being shown more intrusive adverts. It's a society where all your attention is owned. ["Fifteen Million Merits", 'Black Mirror' series 1] Worse than the ads on billboards addressing you by name ["Minority Report"].

[music-lcd]

Here we go again!!! 

[limfung-0]

26th Apr 2026, it happens again. Replace your IT team, ebay.