MAIN 'SEARCH'

'Search' has seemed to deteriorate quite a lot in recent years, just my perception. It's reduced what I buy as it's easier to keep to known sellers and/or to very specific sub-sub-subcategories.

'search' is important - it's a vital tool. And buyers usually have limited time. If buyers PERCEIVE it as poor or possibly biased, they WILL go elsewhere.

SELLER'S SHOP 'SEARCH'

Over the past ?two years I've also had problems with the 'search' box in seller "shops". I mentioned it once in a thread, the glitch was fixed, but several times it's come back. The glitch is that you enter a search term in said search box, wanting to search just that seller's items, and it treats it like you're searching the whole of eBay UK, taking you out of the seller's shop to a general eBay page.

For instance, once I wanted to search "flower" on a seller's page, to narrow down from their 1K+ items, and it took me from the seller's page to a general eBay page with "flower" showing in the main eBay search box, and returning an overwhelming number of results (hundreds of thousands, if I recall). I went Back and searched by scrolling through most of the seller's "shop" - tedious and took ages, but you can't count on buyers to persevere.

So this seller's shop 'search' is a glitch that eBay knows how to repair yet it comes up again from time to time, and you don't know how long the glitch will last. I know it's lost sales from me, who knows how many lost sales from others.

BOTH 'SEARCH'

Improving 'search' should be a technical issue, relatively straightforward!

The problem with lost sales is that it's hard to ascribe the reason(s) unless eBay asks the customers. One single multiple-choice question would do it:

Do you think eBay's 'search' is:

A. Poor.

B. Very poor.

C. So depressingly poor you lose the will to live.

(Thanks, "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" radio show.)