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

[Chris Counts]

For the past 10 years, I have been using searches like "193* Reds," for instance, to find Reds items from the 1930s. I have saved dozens of similar searches (194* baseball, 196* Bazooka, 192* Exhibits, etc.) in my browser because they work so well in narrowing down a search. As of today, they don't work anymore. Is anybody else having trouble searching by the decade? Does anybody have any other tricks for searching by the decade?

[hammer]

Same here you just have to love E-bay.

[egbeachley]

There is a thread within the last week that stated that wildcards (*) would not work anymore. Ebay put out this new policy to enhance the buying atmosphere or something to that effect.

[D. Bergin]

It's for your own good. ;)

Never thought anybody could break a "Search", but Ebay has given it their best shot.

[36GoudeyMan]

I've got dozens of saved searches designed to pick out certain years, types, players, etc., almost all of which use the * wildcard. Now, all of them are useless. To replace them, I have to go in and recreate searches using "(1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939)" instead of "193*". My buying experience is not enhanced.

The way eBay addresses (or wholly fails to address) its buyers' and sellers' wants, needs, objectives, etc., leaves me longing for another super-populated site that offers true auctions, treats buyers and sellers fairly, and permits regular commerce on fair terms. Until all my sellers move to that fantasy site, I'm stuck at eBay....

[wolf441]

Yeah, the whole "-" to keep items out of your searches (like -reprint) is out the window as well.

[cubsfan-budman]

the "-" still works for me.

[Chris Counts]

I'm so glad the folks who run eBay know what's good for us. They seem determined to run a good idea into the ground ...

[Bunker]

I am suprised that someone hasn't came up with a new auction site to compete directly with ebay. True, there are others, but they don't get enough traffic to justify switching my auctions over.

I have listed cards with a few of them as a trial, but they just don't get seen by enough bidders to do well.

As bad as they are, ebay is still the best game in town for buying and selling. (imo)

Edited to add: imo

[doug.goodman]

It's for your own good. ;)

Never thought anybody could break a "Search", but Ebay has given it their best shot.

yep

[collectbaseball]

This is the most frustrating thing ever... even for the most basic things. I used to search for autographs using the player's name and (sig*,auto*). That covered just about any way someone can list one. Now I'll have to use the player's name and (auto, autos, autograph, autographs, autographed, sig, sigs, signed, signature, signatures)... or something like that. And those won't find any spelling errors, like autogarph or signiture, like the old search did.

Looks like there should be some good deals to find, if you've got time to dig. Sucks for sellers, sucks for buyers who don't have an unlimited supply of time. Pretty infuriating.

[Tabe]

Yeah, the whole "-" to keep items out of your searches (like -reprint) is out the window as well.

In either the e-mail I got from Ebay about the change, or the posting on their site, they specifically state that "-" will continue to work - and, in fact, suggest using it.

I am absolutely mystified as to why they made this change at all, however.

Tabe

[Leon]

I am suprised that someone hasn't came up with a new auction site to compete directly with ebay. True, there are others, but they don't get enough traffic to justify switching my auctions over.

I have listed cards with a few of them as a trial, but they just don't get seen by enough bidders to do well.

As bad as they are, ebay is still the best game in town for buying and selling. (imo)

Edited to add: imo

It is actually our own hobbies fault nothing has succeeded. It is a 2 edge sword though. The problem with all of the sites that have sprung up is they don't have the marketing dollars to compete with ebay. I guarantee the Grandslambids s/w is a ton better than ebay but there wasn't/isn't enough traffic to get people to use it for auctions. It's the same thing with all of the other quasi-ebay competitors. Until a company can spend hundreds of thousands, or millions, to compete....we will have ebay to deal with.

[danmckee]

I too am dead in the water with my searches. Simply amazing! I was missing a ton of cool stuff when they merged all of the shiny garbage with the vintage and now, I may miss everything!

I agree with others here, why on earth did they make that change? It isn't like my searches were taking forever to load.

Unreal!

[Leon]

I too am dead in the water with my searches. Simply amazing! I was missing a ton of cool stuff when they merged all of the shiny garbage with the vintage and now, I may miss everything!

I agree with others here, why on earth did they make that change? It isn't like my searches were taking forever to load.

Unreal!

They did it to direct you to sellers and things that make them more money. Next question. ...

[cubsfan-budman]

Here's the deal (IMHO) on the new search BS...this is under their "search tips":

Consider browsing
If you're not searching for something specific, try browsing through the category listing pages for surprising discoveries.

[Sean1125]

I think everyone should call and fill up their customer support lines asking for the feature back until they get the message.

And I've never used it before but that is an INCREDIBLY useful tool they took away - I'm sure they LOSE sales by doing that (you won't find cards you normally would have and they won't get bid up).

E-bay is e-baying it up in e-bay town...

[cmoore330]

I'd love to see more people use Bidstart. I have purchased some postcards there and it worked quite well.

[thecatspajamas]

Aside from lazy programmers, another possible reason for eBay dropping some search functionality is control.

Ebay likes to control what you see when you come on the site.

They changed the default search order a while back to "Best Match" which takes into account not just what you typed into the search window, but also which Ebay sellers they are giving bonuses and bumps in search rankings to this month. They give bumps in search rankings for being a Top Rated seller, offering Free Shipping, participating in the flavor-of-the-month promotion, etc. If you are using the wildcard and other search features to narrow down your search to just what you want to see, then the search "rankings" have little to no effect, and the value added to chasing eBay's Top Rated carrot is reduced.

For example, I have nearly all of my allowed saved searches used, with each one set up to eliminate all but a small range of items that closely match what I am looking for. If I run a search and it returns 200 items, I'll use all of the tools at my disposal to narrow that list down to just a handful that closely match what I'm looking for, and then save that search. When I get an e-mail from eBay with new matches for a search, it rarely has more than a dozen, so it doesn't matter if you're a Top Rated seller getting boosted to the top of my searches or a newbie showing up at the bottom. If there are only 12 results showing on the page, I give them all the same amount of attention, regardless of eBay's efforts to draw my attention to the top of the list. If you take away an important tool for narrowing down the list though, I may have to browse through 100 new results for that search, which means there is much more value in being at the top of that list than a list of 12.

And they HAVE to add value to being a Top Rated seller, or else they couldn't use that incentive to further control sellers by requiring them to have a 1-day turnaround on shipments and use eBay to print their shipping labels in order to maintain their Top Rated status. They add some value to the TR carrot by way of a discount in fees, but that costs them money. Bumping a seller up in Best Match search rankings costs them nothing.

Frankly, when they started requiring a 1-day turnaround for Top Rated status, I breathed a sigh of relief because it meant that I no longer felt like I needed to chase that carrot. Add a requirement that, for my situation, is an impossibility, and I'll just step out of the race. I miss the fee discount, but I don't miss trying to figure out who left me that low star score and put my Top Rated status in jeopardy this month.

[D. Bergin]

Here some info on Ebay searches I have been following. Apparently they are putting their eggs in a basket called, "Cassini" Search.

Some of you may find this interesting............most will probably find it a pointless exercise in Ebay meddling, just for the sake of it.

eBay Cassini Search: A Seller's Perspective:

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y12/m10/i15/s02

Pay attention to the following quote from this article.

Neil said eBay significantly throttled back how many listings displayed in search results in the testing ground. Whether the search engine found 1,000 matching listings or 10,000 matching listings, the results were limited to 200 listings. He feels certain that eBay will indeed limit results in the new Cassini search engine and that as a result, eBay will eliminate listing fees.


Also, check out:

eBay Cassini: Best Match on Steroids

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abu/y212/m10/abu0321/s02


eBay Removes Wildcard Advanced-Search Capability

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y12/m10/i22/s02



eBay Deprecates Wildcard Searches: the Implications

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y12/m11/i05/s01



Sellers Are Guinea Pigs in eBay Search Lab

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/comments/2012/10/1351518791.html



Basically, Ebay is now infatuated with Google, the way it's been infatuated with Amazon for years. As with Amazon, they forget one thing has nothing to do with the other.

Google is disseminating information, Ebay is selling products. Why not keep it simple. I'm looking for something specific..............and there it is...........all of them, in whatever order I want to see them in (price, ending time, etc..).

That's it. No need to tinker anymore. :confused:

[thecatspajamas]

It is actually our own hobbies fault nothing has succeeded. It is a 2 edge sword though. The problem with all of the sites that have sprung up is they don't have the marketing dollars to compete with ebay. I guarantee the Grandslambids s/w is a ton better than ebay but there wasn't/isn't enough traffic to get people to use it for auctions. It's the same thing with all of the other quasi-ebay competitors. Until a company can spend hundreds of thousands, or millions, to compete....we will have ebay to deal with.

+1

Have tried a couple of the others, and as a seller, there is no way I could make a living with the scant sales I saw. The unfortunate reality is that, no matter how much better a new site might be for sellers, you still need LOTS of buyers' eyes to make an auction site work for everyone, and you can't get that with innovative programming alone.

[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.

[thecatspajamas]

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. :mad:

[cubsguy1969]

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]

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

http://www.network54.com/Forum/526604/thread/1352327758/last-1352336998/What+Is+Ebay+Trying+To+Do-

[thecatspajamas]

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]

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]

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

[Sean1125]

Aside from lazy programmers, another possible reason for eBay dropping some search functionality is control.

Ebay likes to control what you see when you come on the site.

They changed the default search order a while back to "Best Match" which takes into account not just what you typed into the search window, but also which Ebay sellers they are giving bonuses and bumps in search rankings to this month. They give bumps in search rankings for being a Top Rated seller, offering Free Shipping, participating in the flavor-of-the-month promotion, etc. If you are using the wildcard and other search features to narrow down your search to just what you want to see, then the search "rankings" have little to no effect, and the value added to chasing eBay's Top Rated carrot is reduced.

For example, I have nearly all of my allowed saved searches used, with each one set up to eliminate all but a small range of items that closely match what I am looking for. If I run a search and it returns 200 items, I'll use all of the tools at my disposal to narrow that list down to just a handful that closely match what I'm looking for, and then save that search. When I get an e-mail from eBay with new matches for a search, it rarely has more than a dozen, so it doesn't matter if you're a Top Rated seller getting boosted to the top of my searches or a newbie showing up at the bottom. If there are only 12 results showing on the page, I give them all the same amount of attention, regardless of eBay's efforts to draw my attention to the top of the list. If you take away an important tool for narrowing down the list though, I may have to browse through 100 new results for that search, which means there is much more value in being at the top of that list than a list of 12.

And they HAVE to add value to being a Top Rated seller, or else they couldn't use that incentive to further control sellers by requiring them to have a 1-day turnaround on shipments and use eBay to print their shipping labels in order to maintain their Top Rated status. They add some value to the TR carrot by way of a discount in fees, but that costs them money. Bumping a seller up in Best Match search rankings costs them nothing.

Frankly, when they started requiring a 1-day turnaround for Top Rated status, I breathed a sigh of relief because it meant that I no longer felt like I needed to chase that carrot. Add a requirement that, for my situation, is an impossibility, and I'll just step out of the race. I miss the fee discount, but I don't miss trying to figure out who left me that low star score and put my Top Rated status in jeopardy this month.

I agree with just about everything... About the time they started that one day shipping I quit... I still maintain "top rated" and "power" seller but I don't get the discount anymore...

[Chris Counts]

Thanks Eric, that suggestion is a big help. It requires a little more effort, but it definitely works ...

[danmckee]

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.

[slidekellyslide]

I agree with just about everything... About the time they started that one day shipping I quit... I still maintain "top rated" and "power" seller but I don't get the discount anymore...

Since they've made it nearly impossible to keep the discount I don't even worry about my shipping stars anymore. I still get everything out on time, but the worry that came with the jerks lowering my rating because they didn't have something in hand two days after they paid for it is no longer there for me.

[thecatspajamas]

Since they've made it nearly impossible to keep the discount I don't even worry about my shipping stars anymore. I still get everything out on time, but the worry that came with the jerks lowering my rating because they didn't have something in hand two days after they paid for it is no longer there for me.

+1

Same great service. Much less stress.