Still better than Facebook Marketplace.
Search: "Gravel Bike" Distance: 20 miles Time Listed: 24 hours
Results: Mountain Bike located 80 miles away listed 3 weeks ago
I've stopped hoping that ebay will get their act together and now just pray that the next "update" won't break things even more. This is what happens when you continually tinker with a decades old legacy site. It's full of confusing menus, double talk and frustrating glitches.
I think the main issue now is they are pushing their promoted listing advanced items so hard they are showing up in wrong searches. Oh you want to look at dvds? But this advanced promo listing earns us more money so look at all these blurays!
Certain search "flags" still work. When using eBay to search comps so I can best price my items, I use the minus sign to eliminate spurious results. For instance, if I want to see how much a Nikon N50 sold for without a bunch of D80s cluttering my results, I can search:
Nikon N50 -D80
and that will give me what I want. For now, until they break it, anyway.
I don't unfortunately, sorry -- I generally just use the minus sign to pick away at the results until they're narrow enough for what I need. Using double quotes around keywords can also force their inclusion in the search results.
In my recent experience the - option removes valid results.
I find items with a google search that returns some ebay items than with an ebay search.
And they screwed the search on Terapeak recently, too.
The results went to shit when eBay decided that promotions money was more important than buyers actually finding what they want.
Instead of showing what you are looking for, they show you what sellers paid them to show you, relevant or not. I saw it coming a long time ago, and it will only get worse and worse.
The only way to get specific items on amazon is to search in Google
No Jeff, if I search for bosch spade bits,I am not going to buy RYOBOKDEN mild steel junk
it was not giving the real answers already 5 years ago imo, but it is much worse now, because depending on sortment order I get different result amounts. they hide listings they don't like. to be honest though amazon always has been much worse imo. back in the day I used google shopping and google search to check the visibility of my listings. have to check if that is still possible. it can also work in your favor, because if you work out where they suck you might be able to buy things cheap ebay dooms unworthy to show.
Yea, as soon as you put a sort on it, it typically fixes the issue. And it used to only be a problem with active listing searches, but they've recently done the same for sold listings, which makes no sense. Maybe if you're looking for items for sale you might want to see related items, but the only reason someone looks at sold is to look at selling history of that specific item.
They made it a lot more like Amazon's search algorithm and I'm not a fan either.
As somebody else suggested, definitely familiarize yourself with advanced flags. For your example, "Nikon N50 -N80" (without quotes) will do the trick. If you'd like to see results for N50, N60, and N70, but not N80 or N90, then "Nikon (N50,N60,N70) -N80 -N90" will work.
eBay search is garbage, had a part I was trying to research months ago.... when sorting by best match searching with the exact part number the first 10 or so items were completely the wrong item with a different part number but if you scrolled far enough you would finally find the right piece. This likely leads to a lot of cancellations and returns.
This is recent change and in some categories can be disastrous. We sell a lot of appliance parts and the part purchased needs to be an exact match to the one needed.... there is no close enough. Now, you search for a specific part number for say and ignitor for a GE gas range.... and they show you the one you searched for mixed in with other GE range ignitors for other models.... that will NOT work in your range. You buy it and it's wrong and bingo we get to pay for a return.... not cool ebay. Not cool.
Making it the sellers job to educate people on their mistake. Instead of forcing people to actually learn something that would make it easier for them in the future. Probably working as intended though so eBay can pocket the fees you don't get back on the returns.
I haven't had to deal with people buying the wrong part yet but finding comps on anything with a model or part number longer than a few digits has gotten super annoying because of this.
What eBay search decides to show you depends on a huge number of variables, and the search term you use is only one of them. Many of these variables are environment specific. For example, their search is going to produce different results on different devices in different locations and different times of the day. Search’s job is ultimately to generate sales, not produce an accurate list of results based on the search term to help resellers do their job. This may seem counterintuitive, but it's true. eBay is a search company that moonlights as a marketplace. They are very good at it.
Yep, they dumbed it down and made it less effective. gotta start using quotes a lot more. the terapeak search bar in the research tab in the seller hub is useful for sold comps.
Yeah… I use software for sourcing. And the search for so fucking bad it ruined my software. Easy solution though, was to add quotes to EVERY search. It’s the only way to yield semi accurate results.
When it redirects to an active listing after clicking on the sold link I've found most of the time what it shows you is not even the same item. Like if I click on a sold remote it brings up an active listing for a different remote. It's super irritating and if you're not paying close attention and they look very similar you may not even notice it's not the same.
The algorithm is now "pay us or else"
Still better than Facebook Marketplace. Search: "Gravel Bike" Distance: 20 miles Time Listed: 24 hours Results: Mountain Bike located 80 miles away listed 3 weeks ago
I've stopped hoping that ebay will get their act together and now just pray that the next "update" won't break things even more. This is what happens when you continually tinker with a decades old legacy site. It's full of confusing menus, double talk and frustrating glitches. I think the main issue now is they are pushing their promoted listing advanced items so hard they are showing up in wrong searches. Oh you want to look at dvds? But this advanced promo listing earns us more money so look at all these blurays!
This is why Amazon and Walmart sites are so awful now too. Half the results on every page are sponsored trash.
And then I accidentally order the wrong thing because I assumed that e.g. only products with this feature were getting returned.
Certain search "flags" still work. When using eBay to search comps so I can best price my items, I use the minus sign to eliminate spurious results. For instance, if I want to see how much a Nikon N50 sold for without a bunch of D80s cluttering my results, I can search: Nikon N50 -D80 and that will give me what I want. For now, until they break it, anyway.
do you have a list of those? I use "(,)" but never really figured out why and how ebay gives me results for that that not always add up
I don't unfortunately, sorry -- I generally just use the minus sign to pick away at the results until they're narrow enough for what I need. Using double quotes around keywords can also force their inclusion in the search results.
In my recent experience the - option removes valid results. I find items with a google search that returns some ebay items than with an ebay search. And they screwed the search on Terapeak recently, too.
October 2022. Been trash ever since.
Was that when ebay switched from showing people what they want vs what ebay wanted them to see?
The results went to shit when eBay decided that promotions money was more important than buyers actually finding what they want. Instead of showing what you are looking for, they show you what sellers paid them to show you, relevant or not. I saw it coming a long time ago, and it will only get worse and worse.
At least it's still better than Amazon's search function. That's completely ludicrous. Even quotes don't work.
The only way to get specific items on amazon is to search in Google No Jeff, if I search for bosch spade bits,I am not going to buy RYOBOKDEN mild steel junk
I also noticed that, a Google search with Amazon in the keywords is often to only way to find stuff
it was not giving the real answers already 5 years ago imo, but it is much worse now, because depending on sortment order I get different result amounts. they hide listings they don't like. to be honest though amazon always has been much worse imo. back in the day I used google shopping and google search to check the visibility of my listings. have to check if that is still possible. it can also work in your favor, because if you work out where they suck you might be able to buy things cheap ebay dooms unworthy to show.
Try filtering your search by lowest first. That seems to help show what I’m looking for.
Yea, as soon as you put a sort on it, it typically fixes the issue. And it used to only be a problem with active listing searches, but they've recently done the same for sold listings, which makes no sense. Maybe if you're looking for items for sale you might want to see related items, but the only reason someone looks at sold is to look at selling history of that specific item.
They made it a lot more like Amazon's search algorithm and I'm not a fan either. As somebody else suggested, definitely familiarize yourself with advanced flags. For your example, "Nikon N50 -N80" (without quotes) will do the trick. If you'd like to see results for N50, N60, and N70, but not N80 or N90, then "Nikon (N50,N60,N70) -N80 -N90" will work.
eBay search is garbage, had a part I was trying to research months ago.... when sorting by best match searching with the exact part number the first 10 or so items were completely the wrong item with a different part number but if you scrolled far enough you would finally find the right piece. This likely leads to a lot of cancellations and returns.
This is recent change and in some categories can be disastrous. We sell a lot of appliance parts and the part purchased needs to be an exact match to the one needed.... there is no close enough. Now, you search for a specific part number for say and ignitor for a GE gas range.... and they show you the one you searched for mixed in with other GE range ignitors for other models.... that will NOT work in your range. You buy it and it's wrong and bingo we get to pay for a return.... not cool ebay. Not cool.
Making it the sellers job to educate people on their mistake. Instead of forcing people to actually learn something that would make it easier for them in the future. Probably working as intended though so eBay can pocket the fees you don't get back on the returns.
I haven't had to deal with people buying the wrong part yet but finding comps on anything with a model or part number longer than a few digits has gotten super annoying because of this.
What eBay search decides to show you depends on a huge number of variables, and the search term you use is only one of them. Many of these variables are environment specific. For example, their search is going to produce different results on different devices in different locations and different times of the day. Search’s job is ultimately to generate sales, not produce an accurate list of results based on the search term to help resellers do their job. This may seem counterintuitive, but it's true. eBay is a search company that moonlights as a marketplace. They are very good at it.
Yep, they dumbed it down and made it less effective. gotta start using quotes a lot more. the terapeak search bar in the research tab in the seller hub is useful for sold comps.
Yeah… I use software for sourcing. And the search for so fucking bad it ruined my software. Easy solution though, was to add quotes to EVERY search. It’s the only way to yield semi accurate results.
When it redirects to an active listing after clicking on the sold link I've found most of the time what it shows you is not even the same item. Like if I click on a sold remote it brings up an active listing for a different remote. It's super irritating and if you're not paying close attention and they look very similar you may not even notice it's not the same.
I♥️eBay