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Option to search seller's listings gone on Ebay.com? | Selling | eBay Canada EN

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Option to search seller's listings gone on Ebay.com?

Summary: In a lengthy discussion, fergua3 initially expressed frustration about eBay's removal of the search box that allowed users to search specific sellers' listings. This change forced users to search the entire site, leading to potential lost sales. lotzofuniquegoodies and others joined in, suggesting this might be an error or a tactic to push more sellers towards store subscriptions. Other participants, like msau4301 and pjcdn2005, confirmed the issue and speculated if it was a deliberate decision affecting non-store sellers. The conversation also touched on the eBay Bucks program and various regional discrepancies affecting sellers. Eventually, fergua3 reported that the search bar was restored, indicating it may have been a glitch.

Is this another bonehead move by Ebay? I have tried to search other seller's listings for items i might be interested in, the way i usually do...ie click on the seller's 'items for sale' and then there is a serach box for items that particular seller offers. But that search box option seems to have disappeared with a new revamped look ebay has done.. Any search i do searches all listings on Ebay, not the specific sellers lisings.

So i guess we can kiss multiple sales to one buyer good bye. Thanks oodles Ebay.

fergua3

5381 View listings

Posted 3 years ago·Last reply 3 years ago

37 comments

drumr1150

·3 years ago

I totally agree. Sometimes it seems ebay is working against us.

fergua3

OP3 years ago

i'm happy to report that the search bar is back in the non store owners other items for sale list. Much better. Glad it was added so quickly.

avidhiker-33

·3 years ago

Great!! Looks like devon@ebay's intervention produced quick results.

marnotom!

·3 years ago

I can only find one thread about this on the .com discussion boards, and interestingly enough as of right now it's half the length of this one:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Buying/Searching-a-Specific-Seller-s-Items/m-p/33486829

Someone on that thread suggests that it's eBay's way of "encouraging" more sellers to get store subscriptions, and I have to admit there might be something to that hypothesis, as much as it sounds like a conspiracy theory,

ricarmic

·3 years ago

Yes that now makes it a "selling feature" as part of the store subscription.....

pjcdn2005

·3 years ago

I've read a a couple of threads about it on .com about it but I'm surprised too that there aren't more.

recped

·3 years ago

There would be some users who might think this change is good.

I know I've had to click the "see results from all sellers" button thousands of times over the years.

kawartha-ephemera

·3 years ago

I'm not a fan of the new design. Until very recently I had been including a link to that "sellers other listings" page in my descriptions. I had been thinking lately about removing the link now that I finally knuckled under on the store subscription ... definitely need to do that now.

recped

·3 years ago

@kawartha-ephemera wrote:
I'm not a fan of the new design. Until very recently I had been including a link to that "sellers other listings" page in my descriptions. I had been thinking lately about removing the link now that I finally knuckled under on the store subscription ... definitely need to do that now.

You have a Store so the See Other Listings landing page has a search bar for only your listings.

kawartha-ephemera

·3 years ago

Yes, I see that now. I feared the link I supplied would be broken, but apparently not the case.

recped

·3 years ago

@marnotom! wrote:
I can only find one thread about this on the .com discussion boards, and interestingly enough as of right now it's half the length of this one:

That is because Khorus have gone "mod crazy" recently and have been moving posts in any way related to technical issues to the dead zone of the Technical Issues board that nobody looks at. I've also seeing more locked threads, fine for the ones that are completely dated but some of the locked threads have been onlya few weeks old and still relevant.

You might notice some posts where the OP pleads with the mods to not move them.

msau4301

·3 years ago

It still seems to be working for me when I checked. I chose random sellers, both those with and without a store and for all of them I checked I can still see "see sellers other items".

Maybe a glitch again based on which browser you use? Or maybe it only still works on sellers you follow? That's who I checked.

byto253

·3 years ago

Same here.

fergua3

OP3 years ago

yes the 'see sellers other items' link works, but when you're taken to the page where the seller's items are listed, there is no longer a search bar. If you're looking for a particular item of interest that the seller might also offer, eg star wars, or scarfs etc the only way you can now see if the seller offers those things is to scroll through everyone of the seller's listings. Before with the search bar you could just enter 'scarf' or 'star wars' and tell instantly whether that seller sold those items.

Most buyers are not going to bother to scroll through 100 or perhpas many more listings on the off chance they will find an item of interest, they'll just buy the one item they orignallly wanted and that's it....so lost opportunity for a multiple sale. The seller loses out and ebay loses out. Unless they put the search bar back in, it will cost non store owners sales and cost ebay its fees on those sales. So unless there is some significant savings to ebay by eliminating the search bars, i don't get why they'd do such a daft thing.

lotzofuniquegoodies

·3 years ago

@fergua3 wrote:
yes the 'see sellers other items' link works, but when you're taken to the page where the seller's items are listed, there is no longer a search bar. If you're looking for a particular item of interest that the seller might also offer, eg star wars, or scarfs etc the only way you can now see if the seller offers those things is to scroll through everyone of the seller's listings. Before with the search bar you could just enter 'scarf' or 'star wars' and tell instantly whether that seller sold those items.
Most buyers are not going to bother to scroll through 100 or perhpas many more listings on the off chance they will find an item of interest, they'll just buy the one item they orignallly wanted and that's it....so lost opportunity for a multiple sale. The seller loses out and ebay loses out. Unless they put the search bar back in, it will cost non store owners sales and cost ebay its fees on those sales. So unless there is some significant savings to ebay by eliminating the search bars, i don't get why they'd do such a daft thing.

@fergua3

The only reason I can see for the majority of eBay's "tinkering under the hood" is to improve load speed for App/Smart devices. Everything else(that has been removed) functioned reasonably well for anyone using a PC. In many cases they depended on those features. If there were valid reasons for frequent appearance for these changes there would/should be actual announcements. There almost never are. When was the last time you saw something that has been griped about for ages ever being fixed. Nothing really jumps to my mind!!

-Lotz

This is next one about to happen. (deprecated). At least this one comes with warning, but maybe not so helpful for the people that relied on it previously.

"Deprecation, in its programming sense, is the process of taking older code and marking it as no longer being useful within the codebase, usually because it has been superseded by newer code. The deprecated code is not immediately removed from the codebase because doing so may cause regression errors." "Typically, deprecation occurs when a feature is unsafe or gets replaced with a superior alternative." 😂

The listings quality report will be deprecated on February 28, 2023. Users will no longer have access to this report as of that date.The listings quality report will be deprecated on February 28, 2023. Users will no longer have access to this report as of that date.

Listings improvement recommendations

Download your listings quality report to get information and tips to help you improve your traffic and sales.

The report is generated based on listing status as of Jan 12, 2023 at 2:21am EST and is updated once every two days.

msau4301

·3 years ago

Ahhhhh, I see what you mean now! If I search within a seller's items anything specific, it just jumps me back out into the main search and shows me EVERYONE who has those items. That is awful for sellers, someone comes to your page and is still shown all the competition once there!

I don't understand why they would take that away either, every week brings another challenge! 😔

pjcdn2005

·3 years ago

@fergua3 wrote:
yes the 'see sellers other items' link works, but when you're taken to the page where the seller's items are listed, there is no longer a search bar. If you're looking for a particular item of interest that the seller might also offer, eg star wars, or scarfs etc the only way you can now see if the seller offers those things is to scroll through everyone of the seller's listings. Before with the search bar you could just enter 'scarf' or 'star wars' and tell instantly whether that seller sold those items.
Most buyers are not going to bother to scroll through 100 or perhpas many more listings on the off chance they will find an item of interest, they'll just buy the one item they orignallly wanted and that's it....so lost opportunity for a multiple sale. The seller loses out and ebay loses out. Unless they put the search bar back in, it will cost non store owners sales and cost ebay its fees on those sales. So unless there is some significant savings to ebay by eliminating the search bars, i don't get why they'd do such a daft thing.

@devon@ebay

As @fergua3 explains there is no longer a way to search a specific item when viewing a sellers listings unless they a store. If they have a store there is a specific search box that we can use and the results are for that seller only. If there is no store, using the general search box at the top gives results for all sellers, so we can't search just that seller's items.

Is this a permanent page or is it an unexpected glitch? It makes no sense for ebay not to allow buyers to see if a seller has specific products for sale. Buyers don't care if a seller has a store, they want to be able to search their listings either way. I realize that they can search using advance search but that is very clunky and time consuming and I'm sure that many buyers are not aware of it.

pjcdn2005

·3 years ago

@devon@ebay

As mentioned earlier in this thread there is no longer a way to search a specific item when viewing a sellers listings unless they have a store. If they have a store there is a specific search box that we can use and the results are for that seller only. If there is no store, using the general search box at the top gives results for all sellers, so we can't search just that seller's items.

Is this a permanent page or is it an unexpected glitch? It makes no sense for ebay not to allow buyers to see if a seller has specific products for sale. Buyers don't care if a seller has a store, they want to be able to search their listings either way. I realize that they can search using advance search but that is very clunky and time consuming and I'm sure that many buyers are not aware of it.

fergua3

OP3 years ago

i doubt this is a glitch. I think it's a deliberate design choice by Ebay which either saves them money somehow or, they beleive, gives incentive for sellers to get stores. In my case it will have the exact opposite effect. The lower my sales go on ebay, the less relevent ebay becomes to me.

I have only made one purchase on ebay in the last 10 months. I used to make several per month. But as prices have crept up on ebay because of higher fees and policies that cost sellers more money, forcing them to raise prices, other venues' prices have become the better option in most cases.

And steadily decling sales over the years have forced me to look elsewhere for sales. So ebay, which was once the center of my universe, is now pluto.

lotzofuniquegoodies

·3 years ago

@fergua3 wrote:
i doubt this is a glitch. I think it's a deliberate design choice by Ebay which either saves them money somehow or, they beleive, gives incentive for sellers to get stores. In my case it will have the exact opposite effect. The lower my sales go on ebay, the less relevent ebay becomes to me.
I have only made one purchase on ebay in the last 10 months. I used to make several per month. But as prices have crept up on ebay because of higher fees and policies that cost sellers more money, forcing them to raise prices, other venues' prices have become the better option in most cases.
And steadily decling sales over the years have forced me to look elsewhere for sales. So ebay, which was once the center of my universe, is now pluto.

@fergua3

eBay has mentioned over the last little while about "levelling the playing field". It sure doesn't feel like that. Between the fact Canadian sellers (vs US/Intl) do not have the same option to providing coupons to buyers, a working calculator for Fedex/UPS and the crazy fees we pay on Canadian shipping because of the 3 times as high fuel surcharge attached to shipping, it makes it extremely difficult for a Canadian seller to remain competitive. One other bonus we are priviledged to enjoy is the GST attached to everything, whereas US sellers only have state tax (except for 5 states.) Plus any seller that happens to be located in either the far east or far west of Canada is going to pay more for shipping nationally vs someone located in Central Canada. So, in the scheme of things....Not really that level across the board.

-Lotz

UPS LA to Miami 3 lb package. 0.64 USD fuel surcharge.

CP Calgary to Halifax 3 lb package 6.62 CAD fuel surcharge

devon@ebay

eBay Staff

Admin3 years ago

Community AdvisorView listings

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

@devon@ebay

As mentioned earlier in this thread there is no longer a way to search a specific item when viewing a sellers listings unless they have a store. If they have a store there is a specific search box that we can use and the results are for that seller only. If there is no store, using the general search box at the top gives results for all sellers, so we can't search just that seller's items.

Is this a permanent page or is it an unexpected glitch? It makes no sense for ebay not to allow buyers to see if a seller has specific products for sale. Buyers don't care if a seller has a store, they want to be able to search their listings either way. I realize that they can search using advance search but that is very clunky and time consuming and I'm sure that many buyers are not aware of it.

Hi @pjcdn2005! There have been multiple reports of members running into this same issue. There is a sitewide ticket that has been open to have this resolved. If there are any members that are running into this they can reach out to customer support here and have their account added to the ticket. You will just let them know that you are running into ALERT 14287.

avidhiker-33

·3 years ago

Hi @devon@ebay, I suspect this is a site-wide issue caused by a recent rollout of site "improvements" that is affecting all ebay.ca customers and non-store sellers.

Blu-ray films & documentaries make up almost all of my ebay purchases.

I periodically check my 'saved sellers' to see if they've added anything of interest. By entering "blu-ray" and selecting "newly listed" I could quickly see their recent adds.

When placing an order I usually search the seller's listings for other blu-rays and have sometimes added 1-3 additional blu-rays to my cart before checking out.

As a result of the recent changes ebay.ca customers can no longer search most ebay.ca sellers' listings.

I don't know about other ebay customers but I am NOT going to waste my time scrolling through multiple pages of sellers' cd, dvd, game, card, etc. offerings to see if they might have other blu-rays of interest.

As another poster mentioned, unless ebay restores the eliminated search capabilities, sellers will be missing out on some sales, and ebay will be losing the commissions on those missed sales.

byto253

·3 years ago

You can search a specific seller, on a PC at least, from the advanced search page but it is now a multi-step process.

First copy the Seller's ID, then click on the Advanced button that is to the right of blue Search button/box to get to the advanced search page. Put in your search item, then scroll down to the 2nd from the bottom box "sellers", where you will see:

Only show items from:
Specific sellers (enter seller's user IDs)

Paste in the seller ID, and click search and Voila ...... what could be easier!!! I can just see everyone doing this!!!

recped

·3 years ago

@msau4301 wrote:
It still seems to be working for me when I checked. I chose random sellers, both those with and without a store and for all of them I checked I can still see "see sellers other items".
Maybe a glitch again based on which browser you use? Or maybe it only still works on sellers you follow? That's who I checked.

You are misunderstanding the issue, I will try to explain.

In the past:

You click a "see other items" link on a listing page.
This brings up the list of items
If you use the search box at the top of the page it would default to only searching the listings of the specific seller.

Now when you do the same thing the search box default to a general eBay search!

If the seller has a Store there is an additional search box, the general one at the top and below that a search box for just the specific seller.

If the seller does not have a store there is no additional search box and the default search box only does a site wide search including all sellers.

This means a buyer has to either scroll through all your listings or use the filters to reduce the number of listings shown and then scroll through those. You could also do an Advanced search to restrict the result to just a single seller but that is cumbersome and the average buyer has probably never used Advanced Search or even know that it exists.

At the moment I'm not convinced this was an intended change or just collateral damage from the redesign of those pages.

msau4301

·3 years ago

Yes, I understand now after seeing other comments posted. Thank you!

regs43

·3 years ago

I cant find a way to seach my own listings in the SOLD section and keep it there. I used to pile up duplicate cards to repost when I have enough to sit there and go through my solds. I used to be able to set it to the SOLD section and search only solds, now when I search for an item I sold it reverts back to only active, so irritating.

I now have to go to seller hub, and search through sold orders, its annoying and kind of slow becasue 90day old stuff shows up first

I don't much care for the way the search looks now, its massive and bubbly looking and I likely wont be buying much on ebay not that I was really anyhow with the garbage search, lack of ebay bucks program which was a nice bonus, etc. eBay has just made it more difficult to use their site over the past 2-3 years

fergua3

OP3 years ago

i didn't realize ebay bucks was gone again. Too bad. I used to get a bit of a spike in sales at the beginning of every quarter as people used their ebay bucks to make small purchases with.

Another quirk with search i've noticed from time to time is that as i am typing my search keywords, Ebay autofills the search box with what it thinks i'm searching for......i've even had it erase my search words and replace it with their own. Super duper annoying. It doesn't happen very often, just on occassion, i guess when it thinks i'm searching for very popular items and don't know how to do it...

pjcdn2005

·3 years ago

@regs43

I now have to go to seller hub, and search through sold orders, its annoying and kind of slow becasue 90day old stuff shows up first.

----------------------------

If you are in sellers hub / all orders you can search for a particular listing. There is a search bar right under the blue bar. There are a few different options as to how you can search....buyer username, buyer name, a word in the title etc .

If they are now showing as the oldest sold first, you can hover your mouse over 'date sold' and it will sort it the opposite way that it is now.

regs43

·3 years ago

Great thanks, I still have an old link saved to use the OLD page to see my sales, I have never really been able to get used to the Hub, things are a bit harder to find soemtimes (in account sections etc)

@fergua3

I think the ebay bucks program technically exists but its only when you get a special message from ebay in your messages about an offer to activate (I have never gotten one since the regular program was abolished), and the other way to get ebay bucks I believe is with an ebay credit card (I think I saw more of this on ebay.com board when it was initially being ended). And if my memory serves me correct you get ebay bucks once a year in January, no longer quarterly. Great ideas by ebay lol!

lotzofuniquegoodies

·3 years ago

@regs43 wrote:
Great thanks, I still have an old link saved to use the OLD page to see my sales, I have never really been able to get used to the Hub, things are a bit harder to find soemtimes (in account sections etc)

@fergua3
I think the ebay bucks program technically exists but its only when you get a special message from ebay in your messages about an offer to activate (I have never gotten one since the regular program was abolished), and the other way to get ebay bucks I believe is with an ebay credit card (I think I saw more of this on ebay.com board when it was initially being ended). And if my memory serves me correct you get ebay bucks once a year in January, no longer quarterly. Great ideas by ebay lol!

@regs43

I got a few bucks with last purchase of supplies but believe there was an offer at the time. Then, after the fact there is no way to check your balance. Makes it harder to use if you can't find it easily. Or just way too many hoops to make it worthwhile.

-Lotz

regs43

·3 years ago

I have never seen an offer since the original program was ended, I check my messages daily and nothing lol. Just means I buy less on the site, ebays loss

msau4301

·3 years ago

I have still received the occassional email when the eBay Bucks were on. While it's certainly not frequent there were at least a couple of times because I bought a couple of things here for Christmas (some collectors in our house!) so I took advantage of the promotion. I received an email January 4th "Your Bucks Are Ready to Use" with the code. There is no eBay Bucks section I could find though to double check it but the email is still in "My Messages" here, saying they expire Feb. 1st.

lotzofuniquegoodies

·3 years ago

@regs43 wrote:
I have never seen an offer since the original program was ended, I check my messages daily and nothing lol. Just means I buy less on the site, ebays loss

Here is the page from eBay help on the subject. Registration is now closed on the program but it does explain what is available for past registrants.

https://www.ebay.ca/help/paying-items/ebay-bucks/earning-using-ebay-bucks?id=4638&st=3&pos=1&query=Earning%20and%20using%20eBay%20Bucks&intent=ebucks&lucenceai=lucenceai&docId=HELP1341

The UK site has their own program called Nectar. You have to register for it on dot UK and have a UK mailing address and

buy items with the Nectar logo on eBay.co.uk
check out using a credit card, debit card, PayPal, or PayPal Credit

Australia has something called eBay plus for buyers at 4.99 per month.

Sorry. There are always strings attached.

-Lotz

lotzofuniquegoodies

·3 years ago

@fergua3 wrote:
Is this another bonehead move by Ebay? I have tried to search other seller's listings for items i might be interested in, the way i usually do...ie click on the seller's 'items for sale' and then there is a serach box for items that particular seller offers. But that search box option seems to have disappeared with a new revamped look ebay has done.. Any search i do searches all listings on Ebay, not the specific sellers lisings.
So i guess we can kiss multiple sales to one buyer good bye. Thanks oodles Ebay.

@fergua3

In doing a bit of testing it seems you can only search of a sellers listings if they have a store. From my personal experience on eBay (pre item specifics decision item specifics best thing since sliced bread) search used to be one of the best features of eBay. Now, it is one of the worst. There is limited importance for sellers to put items in the correct category. I routinely find stuff nowhere close to where they belong. Even groupings of stuff that doesn't belong with the others. Just did a search under gaming consoles and discovered designer men's suits. Huh?? Same goes for trying to find a book or CD. As far as it goes for sorting within a seller, it is basically an empty shell of what it once was because of all the features they have removed over that last few years.

-Lotz

PS. For a seller that has a store, you can no longer toggle between a sellers (generated) categories and eBay categories. At least I am not seeing a way to do this.

fergua3

OP3 years ago

well if you can only search the lstings of sellers with stores that is beyond stupid. Many purchases i've made and sales i've made over the years were from searching a seller's listings or having my listings searched and finding an additional item of interest which lead to a purchase/sale.

It's like whoever makes decisions like this is deliberatley sabotaging Ebay or else they have no clue how online sales work.

pjcdn2005

·3 years ago

I have to agree that it is beyond stupid if they actually intend on only having a search bar when a seller has a store. I keep hoping that it is a temporary glitch.

fergua3

OP3 years ago

And now there's magically a search box appeared with which i can search the seller's listings. So it seems this is just a glitch to another unnecessary change ebay has made. I can't search all seller's lisings though, just some. And i can't serch my own listings.

I haven't tried this on Ebay.ca, so i don't know what the status is there. I've just tested it on Ebay.com