posted on September 12, 2000 08:40:14 AM
I've rarely used AW's "universal search" function, but happened to see the box this AM, was looking for something quite rare, and decide to give it a whirl. Found the eBay listing I knew of plus one on Yahoo, quite handily. I decided to try another term and plugged that in. Lo and behold, I got 15 listings. I'd just run the same search on eBay last night and knew I'd seen fewer, so I went to eBay and ran the same search again. Ticked "title and description" on both. I came up with 6 listings on eBay to AW's 15 (which were all eBay listings). All nine of the listings AW picked up but eBay omitted were from sellers based in Germany; several of them shipped worldwide. I'd discovered the Germany-omission problem with eBay's search engine awhile back (http://www.auctionwatch.com/mesg/read.html?num=2&id=235487&thread=235487), but figured it must be a flaw by design.
This does make me curious. Why is AW's search engine able to produce better results at eBay than eBay's own? Can anyone test the two to see if AW's engine can overcome the early bid/indexing problem at eBay that has been described here at the EO and elsewhere at length?
posted on September 12, 2000 09:24:34 AM
pareau - if you've the time, and inclination, give www.antiquecast.com a whirl with the same terms and let us know the results. This engine is supremely fast and searches ended auctions too - would be good to know how well.
posted on September 12, 2000 10:51:00 AM
Hi Verymodern,
I ran it, and it pulled up 4 listings--the same as eBay when run on title only. I couldn't see how to run it across descriptions as well, or how to run it on completed auctions--unless it's the "price guide" search, which appears to pull from closed eBay auctions. I don't have time to explore, but I'll come back. Looks like an interesting site, and thanks for posting about it.
posted on September 12, 2000 11:09:57 AM
pareau - the price guide slot is for ended auctions and I never realized it was just ebay's, I thought it was also universal. I never noticed, thanks for pointing it out.
Yahoo has the ability to search ended auctions now, so I hope that they upgrade because the speed is impressive, and the opportunity to search ALL ended auctions would be a super tool.
Also - so it did not pull up the yahoo auction for you then?
posted on September 12, 2000 11:31:15 AM
VeryModern,
Let me qualify all this by saying the term I searched on is relatively rare, and did not turn up any non-eBay listings in the AW search, so it's no surprise that it turned up only eBay listings at antiquecast. I don't think that particular search is a fair test of the power of the antiquecast.com engine, and I sure wouldn't want you or anyone else thinking that it's limited to eBay--my search is just peculiar.
I have to run now, but I'm planning to visit antiquecast.com later and will run more searches and put up the terms, so others can try them too. I also want to read about that Stratocaster!
posted on September 12, 2000 11:41:30 AM
VeryModern-Although you can now search the closed auctions at Yahoo, you only get those that closed with a bid! Makes it look like EVERYTHING in the category closed with a bid/sell! If only!!!!
posted on September 12, 2000 11:47:19 AM
okay pareau! I misunderstood.
I know that it searchs Yahoo ongoing. It is my first choice engine for both speed and reliability, I use it all the time, but just never noticed that it only showed ebay's ended.
posted on September 12, 2000 12:05:29 PM
sulyn1950 - thanks, I did not know that either. I've been using antiquecast for "ended" search thinking I was searching universal, so have only used Yahoo's once or twice and apparently did not pay very much attention. Still it's better than nothing I guess.
I will stick with the new one. It searches ebay much faster than ebay searches ebay, and when looking for something obscure, you can't beat searching across all sites and getting a quick result. It works nearly as well as various book searches and someday soon one of these engines will include all ended auctions I hope and then I will dance in the street I suppose.
