eBay Postpones New Cassini Search Engine

Mark Carges joined eBay as its Chief Technology Officer in 2008, and he immediately called eBay's search engine "broken." He set into motion plans to launch a new search engine in a project called Cassini that was originally slated to launch in 2012, according to The Register.

A May 4th Reuters article says eBay now plans to launch Cassini in 2013, but the company has not commented on why it postponed the launch.

eBay has made changes that impact search since 2008, including rolling out product catalogs in some electronics categories, for example. Reuters says a search for iPod in 2008 brought back a car at the top of search results "because the seller noted in the listing title that it came with an iPod adapter."

A search for iPod on eBay today shows product pages - shoppers select the iPod model they're looking for, and product pages similar to those on Amazon.com, but with tabs for New, Refurbished, New:Other, and Used.

Aside from product catalog, many sellers are convinced eBay is tinkering with its search engine and claim their sales are suffering as a result, as described in Sunday's EcommerceBytes Blog. Over the past couple of months, sellers report their listings are failing to show up in the first few pages of search results or are failing to show up at all even days after listing them.

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