I've had search problems for several months.
I get that decline in listings is largely out of eBay's control with the new tax policies and that somethings I think of as declining plenty of others like, but the search and categorization seems to be objectively worsening and is fully in their control.
They completely ruined boxing by including tons of listings for "box" in the boxing sport category - something like 30%+ of auction listings under Cards - Boxing are not boxing at all.
On the app, searches like to try and predict a category and I have to tap filter and adjust the filters the app has decided to use for me. I collect in broad swaths, so I'll search "1911" a lot because I collect basically all T and E cards. The app will limit my search results to the hunting category. If I search "E92", it will filter me to auto parts even though my history has 0 auto parts and tons of old caramel cards - it doesn't seem to factor the user at all when it tries to pre-filter and make assumptions. "Tolstoi" will search for "Tolstoy" instead in the books category only - which must be annoying to collectors of the great author as well as old items often spelled his name the same as it is in the cigarette brand and a ton of old collectible books etc. are left out of the results.
Within a specific seller on the app, the search barely works for me. For example, if I'm looking for 1962 Topps cards and I search "1962 Topps" under a big seller with lots of inventory, I'll get say 20 results. But If I don't search and just scroll through the mass of listings that dealer has I can find 200 cards from 1962 Topps with the set listed in the title. It makes checking Battersbox type of sellers to take advantage of combined shipping deals a pain.
If I search "1966 Topps" it works right about 90% of the time, the other 10% it returns tons of cards from other Topps sets that are number 66 in that set, seeming to ignore the "19" part of "1966" on a basis I can't make heads or tails of how it's happening in the backend code. That it happens so inconsistently is weird.
Another weird one I get occasionally is a -1/+1 affect. If I search, say, "1966 Topps Bobby Bell" it usually works right, but sometimes it includes a ton of correctly listed 1965 and 1967 Topps Bobby Bell cards. Not 1964, not 1968, just 1 before and 1 after.
This all worked perfectly fine a few years ago. I don't know what eBay is doing here and why but the algorithm is a mess in many different ways and it's something they fully control and is vital to their revenues. I don't get it.
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11-18-2023, 02:44 PM
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