posted on December 18, 2000 01:05:19 PM new
Ooops - sorry Pat - thought you were present Here is the post again - if you feel it is inappropriate let me know where and I will revise. I think it is civil enough to be OK -
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No Glenda - it is only your misinterpretation of what I said, not what I said that is problematical. I said that due to ebaYs inability to keep up with DESCRIPTION search indexing, THEY turned off revised indexing on TITLE and DESCRIPTION search. It is what EBAY said and what I reported on. New items get indexed, revised items do not. Title and description search are different, but obviously they are not COMPLETELY different - if they were, ebaY would not have taken the action to turn off revise title indexing - which according to EBAY they have, along with revise description indexing.
As to your agenda, well my daddy always said - actions speak louder than words. You may say you do not have an agenda, but I would say that your activity in threads such as this, tell a more accurate story. Whereas I welcome your intelligent and knowledgeable input to threads such as this, and can even appreciate your critical point of view, I can still object to the underlying theme, which may even be subconscious, that appears to me to be a desire to discredit the value of what I say. You are free continue to do so of course, but in my book, it does display an agenda of some sort. I have no way of knowing your motivation, but am sure that my somewhat abrasive personality is responsible for some of it. What I do in the OAI/OTI does not leave me universally liked, but neither does that dislike stop me from doing what I feel needs to be done. -Rosalinda
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posted on December 18, 2000 01:29:07 PM new
OK Pat - thanks -Rosalinda
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posted on December 18, 2000 01:33:24 PM new
Rosalinda, just now: "I said that due to ebaYs inability to keep up with DESCRIPTION search indexing, THEY turned off revised
indexing on TITLE and DESCRIPTION search. It is what EBAY said and what I reported on."
Excerpt of your post of Dec. 17, 03:38:53 PM:
"...If you revise the auction BEFORE it is indexed in title search the revision WILL show up, but once the item indexes in title search, no further revisions will show up.
Further, the announcement doesn't say anything at all about title search.
I pointed it out because there is a significant difference between title search and description search, not because it was you who said it.
"... if they were, ebaY would not have taken the action to turn off revise title indexing"
They index the titles in description search also. Title search and description search are two different databases.
posted on December 18, 2000 02:17:25 PM new
Further, the announcement doesn't say anything at all about title search.
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It sure DOES - it says - QUOTE-we made an emergency change to capture only information for newly listed items. Changes to items that are already indexed are not captured in this process,including edited titles and description updates. -ENDQUOTE
So I do not understand how you can say it does not say anything about Title search. I still say that what I said is accurate, and that it is what ebaY said.
When you list an item on ebaY the first thing it does is index to title search - usually within 4 hours. Once indexed in Title search no revisions will show up in search - either title OR description(which indexes from 24 to 36+ hours later). If you have evidence to the contrary it would be welcome. -Rosalinda
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posted on December 18, 2000 02:46:45 PM new
Rosalinda, "edited titles" = "edited AUCTION titles", not "title search". The whole announcement is about description search.
"Once indexed in Title search no revisions will show up in search - either title OR description"
Some of the people who post the "where is my item" messages on the threaded board have commented that they can find their item only by the old title - when compared, the new title has been in Title Search, the old title has been in Description Search.
posted on December 18, 2000 03:39:51 PM new
Okay, hopefully this will lighten things u[ a little. I had the most incredible thing happen a few weeks ago. I listed a rather expensive widget, along with the high listing fees, and after 24 hours it hadn't been indexed to where you could find it using key words. At all. Some screw up with bid now or something.
I e-mailed timesensitive at Ebay, and also e-mailed customer support via that convoluted help page they have.
I got a very quick response from timesensitive walking me through the auction cancellation process and also agreeing to credit my insertion fees. Customer support also replied in their stated 24 hours offering the same advice. After all the negative things I've read on these boards about the lack of customer service at Ebay, I was very pleasantly surprised. And I also got a follow up e-mail from them!
So, I guess I'm saying if you feel like your auction has been negatively affected by not getting indexed properly, don't hesitate to contact Ebay. Hey, it worked for me!
posted on December 18, 2000 04:00:20 PM new
Glenda - Huh??? We are now is a conversation of semantics without meaning. what do YOU think ebaY meant when they said - "Changes to items that are already indexed are not captured in this process,including edited titles and description updates" ???
ohandrea - we consistently recommend that anyone who has made an error on their Title or description that they feel is essential for the item to be found, to end the auction, request a refund of their fees and relist rather than do a revise. This has been our standard recommendation since ebaY turned off revise indexing on 13 Sep.
Refunds can be requested by going to -
href=http://cgi3.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?SendSupportEmailShow&subject=Credit%20--%
20How%20can%20I%20receive%20credit%20for%20insertion%20fees%3F%20
(copy paste it in the URL addy box - was told it broke thread so am taking live link out)
Send -
* The item number(s) of the ended auction(s)
* The specific fee(s) charged for them
* Your seller's email address or User ID
* The phrase, GIVE CREDIT in the Subject line or first line of message
This can also be accessed from
http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/select-support.html
All reports appear to support ebaYs full cooperation in this matter, giving the error refunds without trouble. It has been our experience that ebaY has always given refunds for auctions that needed to be ended due to errors.
-Rosalinda
(edited to fix typos)
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[ edited by rnrgroup on Dec 18, 2000 04:40 PM ]
posted on December 18, 2000 05:31:49 PM new
We agree that there are two search indexes, yes? They are "title search" - where a search finds words only in the title of an auction, and "description search" - where a search finds words either in the title of an auction or in the description of an auction.
The announcement says "Description Search" 5 separate times. In no case does it ever say "Title Search." When it said "Changes to items that are already indexed are not captured in this process, including edited titles and description updates" the process they are talking about is Description Search. The titles they are talking about are auction titles.
Again, if you revise an auction title, the old auction title will still show up if you use description search; the new auction title will show up in title-only search. Title search is being updated; description search is not.
posted on December 18, 2000 08:45:19 PM new
Glenda - is that theory or fact based on empirical evidence? - Rosalinda
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posted on December 18, 2000 10:21:06 PM new
Dont you all remember? We have PayPal and Honesty to thank for this feature being taken away.
They were appending to sooooo many listings that it was killing eBays description searches. So eBay just axed the feature on auctions that ahd already been indexed. If you update your text or append that new text is no longer being indexed in the descriptive searches.
It's also why they did the deal with Honesty. Please, do really think they wanted to do that deal? No chance in hell they did. But if they didn't eBays servers were going to kick the bucket. Remember how bad there were back then? Outtages daily just about for darn near a month.
If you remember eBay also threatened to take away the ability to add to your items description alltogether if it becomes too much of a burden...
posted on December 18, 2000 10:31:32 PM newFranko this restriction does not effect the ability to add PayPal, Honesty or any other appendages. You can add and have indexed anything you like, as long as you do it BEFORE the item is picked up in Title Index - which can take up to 4 hours. So if you list, and then go in and add your counters, PayPal logos etc etc, they WILL show up in search. So I can't really see what PayPal etc have to do with it, as the burden is not lessened by this.
When ebaY did the free list day in Sep 99, they restricted description search to the first 256 characters of the description. That is one way to reduce the load on their servers, and they might decide to do that also, in addition to not indexing revised items.
You are correct that if you revise your item before eBay *first* indexes, your entire description will show up in search. But this is Haphazard at best. If you list and then 2 minutes later eBays search cycle completes you're screwed.
Make no mistake, eBay removed a feature. They no longer do search indexes on revised items. This was because between PayPal and Honesty 75% of their listings were being revised. Each of those having to be indexed again by their search. They dont have to do that anymore.
Put it this way:
Then: eBay indexed your description each and every time you made a change to your item.
Now: eBay indexes your description one time after it starts. That's it. If you manage to do all your appends and change your description before they do it, great, you get the changes. Anything you do ater that wont ever be in their search.
Since we have no reliable way of knowing when their search indexes start and stop it's purely luck if you manage to get all your listings with appends into their search.
posted on December 18, 2000 11:56:42 PM new
Here is a great page describing how eBay's indexing process works which was created by vickishome during the "early bid" indexing glitch. http://www.vickishome.com/00ebay/indexproblem.html
I remember the thread that was started on another large auction chat board about the "early bid" indexing problem and someone, possibly vickishome, had received an email from an eBay tech who mentioned that revised auctions aren't picked up in the Title And Description indexing. Unfortunately, that thread is no longer available but I'm sure she has archived the information if someone wants to contact her. This is the thread that was started on AW about that problem and maybe it contains some info on the revised auction issue. http://www.auctionwatch.com/mesg/read.html?num=2&id=233995&thread=233966
posted on December 19, 2000 12:23:15 AM new
Blanche - I quoted the actual AB message on this on page one.
Glenda - auction number? what time was the item listed? what time was it indexed?
Franko - if you read the rest of the thread you will see that I agree that ebaY removed revise indexing. What I do not agree with is your reasoning as to WHY they did it. It is rare that any item gets title indexed immediately and still do not see that it has made any impact on additions of PayPal, Honesty or any other add on.
posted on December 19, 2000 07:31:04 AM new
Rosalinda, for crying out loud. There's one auction listed with either title - we're talking about search, you don't need the item number since it will come up if you search for those words. The revision showed up in the update posted just prior to when I posted the message.
posted on December 19, 2000 10:03:06 AM new
OK Glenda - no problem, it would just be easier with the number. Now that I understand what you were trying to get across I will research the problem see if I can duplicate it and then report on it. thanks for the info - Rosalinda
(edited for a stray w)
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posted on April 11, 2001 10:57:06 PM new
I couldn't get auctionwatch to work after they switched to being a paysite and went to put my auctions on Ebay directly. I made a mistake by forgeting to put an image in the area for the image and therefore Ebay thought I didn't have images on my page. I corrected the pictures and the little camera symbol that shows up that tells buyers that images are available never showed up. I think it effected my auctions since I sold only half as much as usual.
Here is the post again - if you feel it is inappropriate let me know where and I will revise. I think it is civil enough to be OK -