eBay saved searches have become complete noise 5 5

[Sweet Lou 14]

I don't know when exactly it happened -- I started to notice a few months ago -- but at some point this year it seems that eBay has completely loosened the matching rules for searches, resulting in massive amounts of "false" matches.  It's driving me nuts and rendering my daily saved-search alert emails borderline useless.

It used to be that keywords in a search would match only against the listing title, but now I'm getting matches against metadata in the listing that's completely unrelated to the item being offered, and designed to trick the search engine.

Let's take a quick example.  I search for:

"defenders" 5 cgc 9.6

Normally I wouldn't use quotes around a single word -- what's the point, right?  But I tried quotes to see if they would cause an exact match on listing title only, and clearly they don't.

Now let's look at some of the bogus matches.  First, there are matches like this one:

Defenders 47 CGC 9.6 White Early Moon Knight Cover 1st Crossover Marvel 5/77

OK, at least I can understand this.  I wish that eBay wouldn't consider "5/77" to be a match for the number 5, and I haven't been able to figure out a way to cull those out of my search results, but I can live with it.

Next there are a whole bunch of matches that look like this one:

New Mutants 5 CGC 9.6 Joshua Middleton Cover Nunizo Defilippis Story 2003 WP

The word "defenders" doesn't appear anywhere in the listing title, and therefore I would never want this listing to show up in my search results.  And what I really want is for this listing to never generate an alert email that I have to click on only to realize that eBay is sending me garbage.

So, why is eBay showing me this book?  The answer seems to be in the "Item specifics" metadata within the listing:

Obviously this listing has been gamed so that it will match against all sorts of stuff.  Yeah, I'm sure someone looking for Batman or Archie would love to see this New Mutants book in their search results.  

Does anyone know of a way to do a search that matches only against the listing title, so that I can avoid getting all this junk in my inbox?

[october]

I noticed this recently as well, and it's incredibly annoying. A flood of irrelevant junk in my results. I haven't tried to fix it yet though. 

[zzutak]

On 7/13/2022 at 9:28 AM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Does anyone know of a way to do a search that matches only against the listing title, so that I can avoid getting all this junk in my inbox?

Try this: "defenders 5" "cgc 9.6"
When I run it, this search returns only a single listing. 

 

 

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 7/13/2022 at 12:59 PM, zzutak said:

Try this: "defenders 5" "cgc 9.6"
When I run it, this search returns only a single listing. 

 

 

Thanks, but wrapping "defenders 5" in quotes would almost certainly exclude potential matches.  I'm pretty sure that won't match any listing that says "Defenders #5" -- not to mention the sillier titles some sellers use like "Defenders comic issue 5" and so on.

Also, I routinely use multiple issue numbers in search terms, for example:

defenders (5,7) cgc 9.6

This is designed to match 5 OR 7 along with "defenders" and cgc 9.6.

[Lightning55]

Same problem here, it's a mess.  I believe the problem occurs due to Item Specifics incorrectly attributed, or left over from a copied listing.  I haven't found a good solution to it, but haven't found it to be debilitating, yet.  Just putting up with it.

I think it depends on what you are searching for, how many errors sellers have made in posting the listings, and some unknown factors in eBay's algorithm.

If I searched a seller's 3000 listings for Star Wars, about 1/3 - 1/2 of the results will have no apparent connection to Star Wars.

[zzutak]

On 7/13/2022 at 10:13 AM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

I'm pretty sure that won't match any listing that says "Defenders #5"

Well, I'm 100% positive it will (since eBay searches are not case sensitive and ignore special characters like #).  Good luck! 

[darkstar]

On 7/13/2022 at 12:13 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Thanks, but wrapping "defenders 5" in quotes would almost certainly exclude potential matches.  I'm pretty sure that won't match any listing that says "Defenders #5" -- not to mention the sillier titles some sellers use like "Defenders comic issue 5" and so on.

Also, I routinely use multiple issue numbers in search terms, for example:

defenders (5,7) cgc 9.6

This is designed to match 5 OR 7 along with "defenders" and cgc 9.6.

You should type:

("defenders 5","defenders 7") cgc 9.6

This will give you results for Defenders 5, Defenders #5, Defenders 7, and Defenders #7

 

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 7/13/2022 at 2:01 PM, darkstar said:

You should type:

("defenders 5","defenders 7") cgc 9.6

This will give you results for Defenders 5, Defenders #5, Defenders 7, and Defenders #7

 

Yeah, OK.  I don't think you're understanding the general point I'm trying to make here.

Here's another one of my saved searches:

hulk (144,145,147,148,149,150,151,154,157,158,160,168,173,180,183) cgc 9.6

Oh, and also that's just one of a few dozen searches.  I'm looking for hundreds of books.

Can you see why it's completely unwieldy and impractical for me to do what you're suggesting?

[darkstar]

On 7/13/2022 at 1:10 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Yeah, OK.  I don't think you're understanding the general point I'm trying to make here.

Here's another one of my saved searches:

hulk (144,145,147,148,149,150,151,154,157,158,160,168,173,180,183) cgc 9.6

Oh, and also that's just one of a few dozen searches.  I'm looking for hundreds of books.

Can you see why it's completely unwieldy and impractical for me to do what you're suggesting?

You're getting inaccurate results because you most likely have the "include description" box checked when running a search.

How I typed it out above is exactly what you should be doing to find graded copies of a specific issue or issues. Wrapping the title of the book and the issue number in quotations is going to give you all listings with the title of "Defenders #5" and "Defenders 5", along with Secret Defenders 5 and Fearless Defenders 5. With graded books nobody puts a bunch of extra words between the title and the issue number, you aren't going to miss any listings. Now if you are looking for raw copies sure some sellers will title the listing like Defenders, 1st series, issue 5, but a graded copy? Extremely unlikely. 

So no, I have no idea why it is unwieldy for you to type out ("hulk 144","hulk 145","hulk 147","hulk 148","hulk 149","hulk 150","hulk 151","hulk 154","hulk 157","hulk 158","hulk 160","hulk 168","hulk 173","hulk 180","hulk 183") cgc 9.6 one time, sort by newly listed, and save the search. 

[scburdet]

I've found using the minus sign is very helpful in saved searches, especially since a lot of the false positives are the same, or from a limited subset of other books. I use -cgc to search for raw books for example. I might have 1/2 dozen excluded terms, but it's easier/more efficient that making the search more specific.

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 7/13/2022 at 4:45 PM, scburdet said:

I've found using the minus sign is very helpful in saved searches, especially since a lot of the false positives are the same, or from a limited subset of other books. I use -cgc to search for raw books for example. I might have 1/2 dozen excluded terms, but it's easier/more efficient that making the search more specific.

Yes, I do this a lot.

I used simple examples in my original post to illustrate my point, but the minus sign comes in very handy.

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 7/13/2022 at 2:28 PM, darkstar said:

You're getting inaccurate results because you most likely have the "include description" box checked when running a search.

How I typed it out above is exactly what you should be doing to find graded copies of a specific issue or issues. Wrapping the title of the book and the issue number in quotations is going to give you all listings with the title of "Defenders #5" and "Defenders 5", along with Secret Defenders 5 and Fearless Defenders 5. With graded books nobody puts a bunch of extra words between the title and the issue number, you aren't going to miss any listings. Now if you are looking for raw copies sure some sellers will title the listing like Defenders, 1st series, issue 5, but a graded copy? Extremely unlikely. 

So no, I have no idea why it is unwieldy for you to type out ("hulk 144","hulk 145","hulk 147","hulk 148","hulk 149","hulk 150","hulk 151","hulk 154","hulk 157","hulk 158","hulk 160","hulk 168","hulk 173","hulk 180","hulk 183") cgc 9.6 one time, sort by newly listed, and save the search. 

I do not in fact have the "include description" box checked.  I am saying, and a couple of other posters in this thread seem to be confirming, that something has changed on eBay's end.  Searches that used to generate matches solely based on the listing title are now matching against the full item description and metadata, without my changing anything about them.

I understand what you're suggesting and while I disagree about not missing any listings, I do agree that those will be relatively rare occurrences.  It would probably take me a solid hour or two to replace all of my saved searches with searches like what you describe above -- and I will end up with more of them, as eBay will break once the search string gets too long which will require more "chunking" into a larger number of saved searches.  I may in fact end up doing this, and so I appreciate the suggestion.  But I'm not thrilled about having to essentially implement a workaround.

[Nic8612]

I haven't had any luck with boolean search techniques on Ebay in years.  I didn't know they still worked for people 

[Black Bat]

Related to this is when just doing a general "Golden Age" search by checking Golden Age in the "era" option - over the past month or so you get books from all eras that have golden age characters in them - like modern Superman's and Batmans etc... Must be a key word thing.  Seems to only be from certain sellers though, unfortunately those with large amounts of modern superhero books in stock, as you can get several pages in a row of nothing but moderns. Could be a sabotage hack move by a nefarious collector to drive off the more impatient GA collectors like me.  I've messaged one of the sellers and he's aware of the issue and tried to fix it but Ebay doesn't know what's going on.  

Edited July 13, 2022 by Black Bat

[mysterymachine]

The best thing that has worked for me is to add the year of publication. For example "defenders 5" 1972.

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 7/13/2022 at 6:29 PM, mysterymachine said:

The best thing that has worked for me is to add the year of publication. For example "defenders 5" 1972.

I'd be concerned about missing potential matches if I tried this, but maybe if the 1972 is always in the metadata it would work?

[Dr Zen]

On 7/13/2022 at 5:29 PM, mysterymachine said:

The best thing that has worked for me is to add the year of publication. For example "defenders 5" 1972.

This is what I do too.

[mysterymachine]

On 7/13/2022 at 3:46 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

I'd be concerned about missing potential matches if I tried this, but maybe if the 1972 is always in the metadata it would work?

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It's a definite possibility. But it's the only way I have been able to cut the "clutter" from the search list.

[ADAMANTIUM]

I first noticed this in 2019 or 2020, when searching for Marvel Premiere 15 cgc 9.0, it never gives only 9.0 it gives all results 

[Lightning55]

If you want to see a lot of irrelevant results, do a search for ANYTHING on Amazon.  Yeesh!  Just horrible.