Strange results when searching

[murphcrud]

Good Morning,

I did the following search on eBay.ca, looking for this item 

LUNAR TIGER 1998 - SILVER $15 WITH 24 KARAT.

I found what I was wanting, but after the results came a list of automotive parts from the same seller.  When viewing these auto parts, I see that he has them listing in the correct category (as is this coin set).  I have had this occur one other time but it was so long ago, I can't recall why this happened.  I contacted the seller of the parts who advised 'Beats me".

Anybody shine any light on this?

[kawartha-ephemera]

Much of the time I find search doesn't respond well to long strings of words, just as you've described here, the system seems confused by so many words not knowing what categories it should even be checking for matches.

My general approach now is to limit my query to 3 or 4 words, I do NOT want search to guess where I want to look so my initial search often includes 1 word that is sure to return results from a few relevant categories.

For example, to get started I would not begin with "LUNAR TIGER 1998 - SILVER $15 WITH 24 KARAT" as there are too many potential ways to interpret that range of terms. Instead, to make it perfectly clear I am looking for a coin with certain attributes I would shorten my search to just "Lunar Tiger 1998 coin". By including "coin" or "postcard" or "stamp" or whatever the relevant category may be I'm much more likely to get relevant results, once I have search looking in the correct category or categories it's simply a matter of using the left of page filters and/or adjusting the 2,3 or 4 terms used. Often even simple adjustments like reversing the order in which the terms are used will return a few different results.

Search is so frustrating, if only it were as simple as above, as we all know it's not. We can focus our search a dozen different ways and still not find "everything" available. Searching sold and completed has gotten particularily problematic

[pjcdn2005]

I agree....more search words makes the search less accurate. 

I searched for  Lunar Tiger 1998 and coin listings were the only ones that came up.

[murphcrud]

I appreciate your input, but still cannot understand why those other items also showed up during my search. That made no sense to me.

[murphcrud]

Totally agree.
But none of the words that I used for the search appear in the automotive parts that came up. Still confused.

[femmefan1946]

It could be worse.
I did a Search for a friend last night, a book title he wanted to sell, on eBay and on AZ.

Just the title. Not the author.

On eBay I got about 10 results, all about the same TV show and six for the actual book.

On AZ I got over 300 results, only 60 of which were books, and none of those were his title, although some were BattleStar Galactica novels or other titles.  A large percentage of the listings had nothing to do with the show. I mean, candles? bicycles?

I've had the same sort of thing happen with a few other searches. 
I am beginning to suspect that the reason some people buy on eBay at a higher price than on AZ is that they can't find what they want there and can find it here.

[kawartha-ephemera]

@murphcrud 

Speculation .... 

 "LUNAR TIGER 1998 - SILVER $15 WITH 24 KARAT" contains a string of numbers, 1998 15 24 which search has literally guessed is a Part # or UPC .

So, search has returned some "partial matches" found in titles and item specifics. Automotive parts listings are chuck full to overflowing with all sorts of "will work with" and "cross matches to" part #s ... lots of opportunities for search to find partial or even complete matches there.

[murphcrud]

Well ------, none of those number in my search appear in the automotive parts that show up, when I did the search. It would seem to me that if what you are implying, there would be a great deal more automotive and other items that contain numbers in their listings, that would also show up. (???). Correct? Or since I asked for 1998, wouldn't you expect to see automobiles and parts containing that year in their listings?
No matter.

I don't think that anyone has a definitive answer to the question, unless you are total computer geek with full knowledge of the internal capabilities of the eBay system.
I

[eburtonlab]

I tried the search terms you listed in the original post using a Canadian address for shipping and got zero exact results.

Often when a search returns zero exact matches, eBay will provide other results that match fewer search terms by dropping some of those search terms -- perhaps that lead to the results you saw. Or perhaps you saw results that are no longer listed now, or used slightly different keywords.

Automotive parts in particular may have many item specifics listed that correspond to makes and models that use the same part -- sometimes running into hundreds of pages; such listings may have many different years listed as well, as it is not uncommon for parts to be compatible with numerous years and models. If you are not limiting your search to a particular category, many automotive parts listings may contain the same keywords buried in those compatible part item-specifics, and those parts may turn up in a keyword search.

If you could provide a link to the search results of the actual search you performed, perhaps someone can figure out exactly why you are seeing those particular results.