posted on March 9, 2001 07:33:44 PM
Boy, this is weird. I did a search in a category (#3244), and got 1 item back. So I checked
"Search titles and descriptions (to find more items!)" and got 0 (ZERO) items back.
How can this be??? As a seller, this makes me verrrrry nervous.
I thought perhaps the item had closed during the few seconds it took to place the check-mark
and click on Search, but nope! It doesn't close until March 13th.
posted on March 9, 2001 08:00:26 PM
I had a similar experience recently on ebay. When I did my search it showed X amount but if tried to list the search any other way -newly listed first, lowest to highest price or highest to lowest, it would show "sorry, no items matched your search". But if I went back to the default listing the items showed up again. What's going on over there?
posted on March 9, 2001 08:26:02 PM
I don't know, but I posted a message in the "Technical Issues" board. There are several threads going on searches there. We'll see if anyone from eBay pays attention.
In the meantime, I'm going to run similar searches for my items that have been on for more than 24 hours, and see if I get results.
posted on March 9, 2001 10:18:23 PM
Title search and title w/description search are two completely separate databases. Title search is updated much more frequently than title w/description search (because the former indexes only the titles, and the latter indexes every word of the title and the description), so sometimes the results are different.
posted on March 10, 2001 12:12:01 AM
It's certainly nothing new. For years I haven't trusted Ebay item searches.
I've searched for items I knew there wer dozens of and been shut out with nothing. I'll wait a few minutes and try again and get a bunch of items with the EXACT same search.
Anither thing that sellers should know is that when a buyer does an item soecific search no gallery preview images are there.
If I pay for a gallery image, shouldn't it show up no matter how a person finds my item?
posted on March 10, 2001 01:07:46 AM
You might want to check with the announcements. I think they have been having trouble with the search areas again.
It is disturbing that the second search you did to widen the search came up with fewer results.
Another thing about just title searches: You have to be really careful what you type in. For example, I used to copy and paste my titles in from my word processor. Somehow I copies a "stoke" command after the title. I can't remember if it was the space bar. Since I copied it, when I did a search it wouldn't pull up my auction. I revised the title by typing in exactly the same title and then it pulled up in a search.
Now I type all new titles, no cutting and pasting.
posted on March 10, 2001 03:09:55 AM
This is old news going to back around Septer 2000 I think. eBay announced that they would be turning of certain parts of description search. They've not given me or anyone else any answers, only that they are working on it. I think searching by description is going to go by way of searching by description on completed auctions.
Remember that? We used to be able to do that, then they said they had to temporarily turn it it off. That was two years ago! Some temporary fix, huh?
posted on March 10, 2001 07:05:46 AM
I just performed a search on toile - just the title.
269 items .. 6 pages - page 1, page 2, but when I click to go to page 3 - it says -" Sorry, we couldn't find any items for toile."
Yuh?
noteye
My thoughts on this issue have gone 'Un-Surveyed' and may not be of importance to the P.T.B.
posted on March 10, 2001 09:28:39 AMkellyb1: There is a problem with apostrophes - depending on how the apostrophe was posted (copied from a word processor as opposed to typed in by hand in the form, perhaps), an auction may or may not come up in search because the person's browser interprets one of them as a graphic as opposed to an actual character. There is no fix for that one.
People also continue to use quotation marks in titles, which they specifically say not to use, because it will interfere with search results.
flynn: September 2000 to March 2001 isn't quite 2 years yet. They apparently turned on the updating in title w/description search a week or so ago, but haven't announced it (there's a thread on eBay's Search board entitled "the status of the apparatus," with a recent post by a pinkliner). Considering that title w/description search is now 48 hours behind, I think it's probable they'll turn updating back off.
noteye: The explanation for what you encountered is this: All the items listed on all the eBay sites (main and international sites) are posted into the same database. The count and initial number of pages reflects the number of listings everywhere, but the results when you start going through the pages are the "filtered" ones showing just the items on the site you are searching. They haven't figured out a way, yet, to have the counts match the actual results for that site.
posted on March 10, 2001 02:11:34 PM
This has happened to me occasionally too. I have several specific title/description searches bookmarked so that I need only click on the bookmark to produce the latest results.
About two days ago I got a "Sorry, we couldn't find any items for ..." message. I {i]knew[/i] there had to be items listed so I hit my reload/refresh button and sure enough on the second try 24 items appeared in the listing.
This has happened at different times in the past too, though it seems to be a very sporadic glitch. I wouldn't worry about it too much.
They apparently turned on the updating in title w/description search a week or so ago, but haven't announced it (there's a thread on eBay's Search board entitled "the status of the apparatus," with a recent post by a pinkliner). Considering that title w/description search is now 48 hours behind, I think it's probable they'll turn updating back off.