Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.153.112] on Tuesday, March 18, 2014 at 14:13:59 :
In Reply to: Ebay posted by jerryinidaho [64.234.49.226] on Tuesday, March 18, 2014 at 12:45:34 :
Ebay has changed its search so there is absolutely no way to force it to show you only what you type, and not a bunch of unrelated garbage. I was trying to find "6mm copper tubing" for example, and it seems to show me every thing with any of those words anywhere in either the title or the body of the description. There is no way to restrict it to only the title, and no way to restrict it to only the exact words you type.
This is really cutting into my light bulb sales, because the normal way to search is something like "1251 bulb" or "1251 lamp", which used to only bring up listings for light bulbs with those numbers, but now it brings up 8000 results, most of which are LED bulbs that don't even have that number anywhere in the title. I have a hunch that it "knows" that 1251 is some sort of automotive bulb, and so it shows EVERY automotive bulb in the results. I don't think I've sold one box of 1251s since they changed their search.
Amazon is actually even worse about automatically "broadening" searches, and even Google these days requires some severe insistence in order to get it to give you want you ask for instead of what it thinks you should want.
Apparently the beancounters and MBAs at Ebay have decided that if they show people more results, people will be more likely to buy stuff, but what good does it do when the thing you want is buried at the bottom of thousands of unrelated things that you don't want?
Now, the question is how do we get Ebay to change?
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