eBay acknowledged a problem with its search engine on Monday in a response to a longtime seller who left a comment on eBay’s Facebook page on Sunday.
The seller said that a few months ago, they noticed that “entering a fairly precise inquiry still yields a number of unrelated items” in search results. The moderator said eBay was working to fix it:
“We appreciate you bringing this to our attention. We have been notified of the problem, and our IT department is working hard to fix it. We understand how much this can impact your experience. We’ll be happy to assist with any future issues!”
Buyers and sellers who turn to industry boards to discuss eBay’s search engine often agree the experience is less than satisfactory, but there’s one thing few seem to agree on: exactly when they believe problems with eBay search started.
Days before Christmas, sellers were discussing that very issue in a thread on Reddit. The person who started the thread said they used to have fun browsing and looking stuff up on eBay, “But over the past year or two, the search function has gotten progressively worse,” and said, “It seems like each month, I get more and more junk results not related at all to what I’m searching for.”
The original poster said they got inconsistent search results on eBay, writing:
“Word order matters a lot. If I search for “Black Lotus MTG” right now, I get 381 results. But, if I search “MTG Black Lotus” I get 503 results. How the hell is this even possible? It’s the same keywords. It’s the same damn search.
“Sorting by Lowest Price, Highest Price, etc. changes everything as well. If I change the 503 “MTG Black Lotus” search to sort by lowest, it turns from 503 results to 118 results. Are you kidding me?”
Another eBayer who responded said, “eBay search does not work like Google search, which sucks, since that is a reasonable expectation.” They also pointed out that adding a word to a search term on eBay would bring back more results instead of fewer:
“Search “Black Lotus MTG -pokemon” which in the google search world would help drill down to FEWER listings, on eBay you’ll get even more listings. That 503 total goes to 1600+ listings.”
For items highly valued by shoppers, it may be worth their while to spend the time crafting and fine-tuning search queries, but people looking for items they don’t wish to spend time searching for may grow disenchanted if eBay doesn’t fix the problem its Facebook moderator acknowledged on Monday.