eBay: no more *
 

I just received an email from eBay that said that the wildcard * would no longer be supported due to some recent "search improvements". Most of my wildcard use is to exclude unwanted items, not find more. For example, I want to exclude any item that references post-2000, I list -200* -201*. Now it would appear I have to exclude each year separately.

Any change from eBay that will seem to force us to wade through more irrelevant items

It's not a great decision by eBay. It will take people longer to find their items, which in turn could cause many to not bid nearly as much, and purchases may decrease.

Maybe they are just hoping after weeding through all those reprints maybe we will just break down and buy some just because they are there and staring us in the face. ;)

I Wonder...
 

...whether ebay actually "test markets" this stuff out before foisting it upon its customers.

The wildcard serach is something that is fairly common, I think, in many search engines and is very useful in either including wanted info or excluding unwanted info.

Wait, I just answered my own question. "Very useful" and "ebay" never appear in the same sentence.

I have a lot of searches for specific decades 192*, 193*, etc. This really screws up my searches! :mad:

Shit. I wasn't even aware that you could do that...Damn. I've been typing in individual years to exclude the whole time.. That would've been so much easier.

Zack, that's funny, but given all the evidence, there have to be a lot of really dumb people who honestly think that strategy works.

My favorite part of the e-mail from eBay was when they explained how to adjust your Saved Searches to account for the change. In every example they gave, the search string you had to type in was considerably longer than the one with the *, and still didn't account for spelling errors by sellers.

The reality is, it's pure laziness on the part of eBay's programmers, with eBay's usual "this is for the better of us all" assurances smeared on top. A novice user won't be confused by using wildcards, because they won't use wildcards. Anyone with half a brain can see that removing functionality from the search features does not improve the user's experience.

How long do you think it will be before a third-party site like Goofbay will offer up an eBay search function that still allows wildcards?

I noticed last night that the format changed again. Took me awhile to search properly.

f.w.i.w. I never got an email from Ebay regarding this change. I just tried one of my saved searches which uses the * and the search worked just the way it should have. No 20*, 199*, etc. popped up.

Supposedly Nov. 5 is when it is supposed to take effect for Saved Searches. Looks like they began implementing it earlier for regular searches. I first noticed it when searching completed listings.

It especially cracks me up when a seller creates individual listings for each of the 20 reprints they have.

They have also removed the "completed transactions" tab - Im sure you can get it for a price?!?

Edited to add: found it, its up top and not on the side

From what I have been reading on forums and blogs it seems this change will help fleabay direct people in a certain way....go figure.