As of today, I can no longer search eBay by the decade ...

slidekellyslide · #1 11-07-2012, 02:12 PM

Their search function has sucked for a loooooong time now. There are times that I am looking something up to find a value and see if it's even worth listing on ebay...I will type it into the ebay search bar and find nothing. So I'll go to google and search for it and find 4 or 5 links to different ONGOING auctions on ebay at that very moment. Why these auctions don't show up in a search on their own frigging site is a mystery to me.

thecatspajamas · #2 11-07-2012, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

Their search function has sucked for a loooooong time now. There are times that I am looking something up to find a value and see if it's even worth listing on ebay...I will type it into the ebay search bar and find nothing. So I'll go to google and search for it and find 4 or 5 links to different ONGOING auctions on ebay at that very moment. Why these auctions don't show up in a search on their own frigging site is a mystery to me.

Same thing happened to me a couple weeks ago, and I never could figure out why. A friend asked me to look up the item number of something that had ended the night before b/c he wasn't going to be near a computer for the day and eBay on your phone is useless for completed items. Anyway, I searched and searched, put in every combination of terms I could think of, and nothing. Never did come up with a match, and I wish I had thought of using Google. He was able to pull it up in 2 seconds when he got home that night, but I didn't put 2 and 2 together until reading Dan's post that it had to be because they were screwing with the search function.

cubsguy1969 · #3 11-07-2012, 03:57 PM

My ebay sales have absolutely sucked this week. I use the traditional auction format because I don't pay much for my merchandise (I buy books, records, old paper, collectibles at estate sales and flip). The auction format is typically fairly reliable and I enjoy getting the occasional surprise when a bidding war breaks out. This week I've had items that should be selling for $30to $50 going for $10. I know that happens with auctions sometimes, but usually other listings go higher and it evens out. But this is across the board and many things aren't selling at all. My listings aren't getting nearly as many views, I'm receiving virtually no questions, hardly have any watchers and lousy sales. All of this despite the fact that I'm a top-rated seller, one who ships everything the next day (killing myself to do it on top of a full-time job) and have a perfect feedback score that just surpassed 5000. I have no doubt that ebay playing around with the search function is to blame. So thanks, ebay! Yet another "improvement" that screws the small seller. They're such unbelievable a-holes. It's truly incredible how clueless they are.
Rob Fouch

egbeachley · #4 11-07-2012, 09:10 PM

4th post down. A way to get around the missing wildcard function.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/52660...+Trying+To+Do-

thecatspajamas · #5 11-07-2012, 09:47 PM

Eric, that works for the limited scenario of searching for items by decade (albeit with a lot more typing).

What it does not account for though is unpredictable descriptions and/or human error. By not allowing wildcards, the searcher now has to anticipate every spelling and grammatical variation that the seller might use. It's not just listing out every year in the 1930's for by-the-decade searches (also add in 1930s for those sellers who don't give a specific year), but suppose you're searching for Yastrzemski items? How many different ways do you think sellers will misspell that? And to pick them all up, you would have to anticipate ALL of them, not just search for "Carl Ya*"

bcornell · #6 11-07-2012, 10:05 PM

I worked there for longer than I care to remember. Search is the single most difficult problem they face, because they've relied on keywords and those get spammed by sellers. Make one "improvement" and sellers find new ways to get around it.

eBay does not care about collectables. Revenue is about selling fixed price commodity items. We can bitch & moan, but they still have the traffic and they can make these kind of annoying changes.

Bill

glynparson · #7 11-08-2012, 03:14 AM

No thanks, screw ebay they wonder why I have not sold a single item in years.

danmckee · #8 11-08-2012, 02:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bcornell

I worked there for longer than I care to remember. Search is the single most difficult problem they face, because they've relied on keywords and those get spammed by sellers. Make one "improvement" and sellers find new ways to get around it.

eBay does not care about collectables. Revenue is about selling fixed price commodity items. We can bitch & moan, but they still have the traffic and they can make these kind of annoying changes.

Bill

The fact that they hired Cornell should tell all of you what kind of company you are dealing with.

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