SEARCH IS WORKING STRANGE

[whistlersmother1]

I was seaching to see what items had sold and for what price. i sell collectible postage stamps. i put in china 2015 with scott number to identify it in stamps. i got shoes, car parts, electronics. it tells me that china has no issues for 2015 which is rediculus.

what is happening? i tried seaching the discusion groups everything that comes up is old and it is giving me stuff from 1 to 3 years ago.

any thoughts?????

[eburtonlab]

Are you limiting your search to the Stamps category? 

Once you enter the keywords and search, choose Stamps from the categories on the left side of the search results.

https://www.ebay.ca/sch/260/i.html?_nkw=china+2015&_from=R40&_sop=10&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1

[ricarmic · Accepted solution]

I "live" in the same world and I too have experienced the same thing.

Generally the searches work ok, but sometimes I am experiencing the exact same situation, (even with "stamps" as the category) with all sorts of non-stamp stuff included. I haven't found a way to fix it for that particular search string. Other orderings of the search string will sometimes help and or taking a piece out as in 2015 or the Scott number in the given example.

I'm presuming its a glitch, hopefully it gets fixed soon, it extends the research time required.

[eburtonlab]

Generally the searches work ok, but sometimes I am experiencing the exact same situation, (even with "stamps" as the category) with all sorts of non-stamp stuff included. I haven't found a way to fix it for that particular search string.

Are you sure you are limiting your search to the Stamps category after you choose your keywords and search? If you try to choose the category first that may not work; you have to choose the category after the search results have loaded.

If you post a link to your search that might indicate whether sellers are listing in the wrong category or if you are not actually searching within the category you want.

[ricarmic]

Yes as I mentioned it is happening in the "stamps" category, in 2nd and 3rd attempts after ensuring "stamps" is/remains the restriction. 

If memory serves, it is often in situations where there are very few if any results. Normally it shows the very few with the "close" matches below and/or wider search in all categories as you mentioned which it advises of, something like "zero results in stamp category so searching in all categories". I don't recall seeing that in those situations.

I didn't use to have this happening, so either there's a glitch or a change to the search algorithm in these cases. I'm not working on anything requiring "research" at this time, when it happens again I'll try to remember to put an example here.

I tried to recreate OP's example, I suspect that the use of "China, 2015 9999" where 9999 is the Scott number might not return much in the way of results as many of the listings are from China, and do not have the scott number in them - so it would be similar to the situations I described with few if any results coming back.

[whistlersmother1]

thank you for the reply. i have been doing this for 20 years.  china 2015 should return thousands.  i find search almost useless some days.  i put in china 2015 in stamps and it sadi zero listings. got bad when AI started being used.

sandra

[reallynicestamps]

I use Google to get catalog numbers sometimes.

Even with Stamps in the search I get all sorts of unrelated stuff.

[whistlersmother1]

yes. i have been doing this for 20 years. search has been almost useless lately. ebay has made some great improvements but ai seems to cause issues. i just want things to run smooth again.  where is all the extra fees going. a lot of my buyers have left ebay because of stuff like this.  i keep hanging in there as i do like doing ebay.  sandra