How do you search when buying?

[nan*55]

Do you search by keywords or category ?

[pjcdn2005]

keywords

But my husband always goes to a category and then searches.

[mr.elmwood]

Sometimes I will search by keyword, and will too many hits, narrow it by category. I never start with category.

[nan*55]

Just wondering. LOL . I see so many items in the wrong category.

[ricarmic]

This raises an interesting point. Normally I search broadly ie in the stamps category but not in a more defined category within stamps. I rarely search all categories.

I recently had some good stuff that also appealed to non stamp people. Generally the listers we're listing them outside the stamp categories, which I thought was a mistake. I was able to achieve good (better) selling prices by listing them within the "right" categories perhaps only because searchers were only looking within the "right" categories.

[rose-dee]

I almost always search by keyword first.  

However, as a follow-up to 'ricarmic's' post, I seem to recall reading somewhere that having an item listed in an appropriate category may help in search placement.  This may also tie in with the fact that eBay searches apparently also (somehow) take the description section into account.  They certainly must take item specifics into account as well. 

In other words, even if an item is properly described in its title and item specifics, perhaps it's possible that if it's in the wrong category, it won't be matched up in searches by keyword as well as an item that has all 3 parameters set appropriately.  

All of the above is surmise from much experimenting and observation -- who really knows for sure?