eBay Saved Search Feature Disappoints Savvy Seller

by: IFindBugs

I am a professional inventory buyer for my collectibles-related business.I make extensive use of eBay's saved searches feature. I currently run about 30 saved searches.  Thus I get about 30 emails from eBay per day just on that. I automatically filter the emails into a particular mail box.

About one-third of my search are ''generic'' keyword searches in a particular large category i.e. a search for ''spoons'' and search for ''cups'' etc. That looks like:

(spoon,spoons,cup,cups,saucer,saucers) ... in a category.

Using that search result set is how I find new sellers to add to be stable of regular sellers that I focus on buying from. I try very hard to buy lots of items from as few sellers as possible. It is very costly in time and money to manage, track, reconcile, and do the accounting for the volume of buying transactions that I do. eBay makes things soooooo darn hard (time consuming) for high-volume buyers.

The other two-thirds are ''OR'' keyword searches WITHIN particular SELLERS. Some of my favorite sellers add hundreds of items per week, but only a small percentage of their items will be useful for me. I HAVE TO set these searches up on sellers items-list page (searching only within that seller).

Because most of the ''seller searches'' are searching for the SAME keywords WITHIN each of those sellers, there is a useful trick to controlling the EMAIL SUBJECT LINE. That is important because I get about 30 search results emails per day and I need to be able to sort/group them BY SELLER so I only need to click through on ONE of those emails (per seller) and discard the rest (per seller), every few days.  

So a typical seller search, if I want to see all results (within one seller) -- this has to be FIRST TIME initiated from and saved from the seller's item listing page -- looks like (for all items that are spoons AND/OR cups AND/OR saucers ... for a seller by the name of JoeSeller):

(qjoeseller,spoon,spoons,cup,cups,saucer,saucers)
.... eBay adds the seller filtering part.

... Within ( ), NO spaces, separated by commas.

Notice in this example the letter ''q'' is the first letter and it MUST be the FIRST search term in the list (for email sorting/grouping purposes). If I wanted to, for example, do different searching in categories vs sellers OR auction vs BIN, I could use a different leading character(s):

qqjoeseller  (qq for all seller searches)
xxbincups    (for all BIN category searches)
yyauctioncups  (yy for all Auction category searches)
etc.

Thus I achieve native email sorting and grouping whenever I want.

The purpose of ''gjoeseller'' is to control the emails' subject line. The q, or whatever unlikely letter(s) you want, is to make that, which is essentially a keyword that WILL be searched for, but will return NO results -- IT IS JUST A ''LABEL'' FOR SORTING AND GROUPING EMAILS.  If instead of ''qjoeseller'' I had used ''joe'' or ''seller'' or some other common word, I would get results back that I don't want. I don't want ''joe'', I want spoons, cups, and saucers.

Thus I have a control mechanism to know WHICH SELLER that email search result is for.  Without that trick, I would get, per week, about 140 email search results  all with IDENTICAL subject lines -- which would waste hours of my time per week (since I do look at all the results every week, but only ALL the results for one seller when I choose to look at that seller).

The saved searches are the ultimate ''engine'' behind my ability to be bidding on (though a bidding service) between 100 and 250 items at any given moment. In July I won my bids on almost 500 items. However, because I am buying for resale, and I am competing against collectibles-related collectors, my monthly win rate varies from 40% to 60%.

Since I am buying as a dealer, and I am assuming that 10% of what I buy will be no good (there is not enough time in the world to complain about or return cheap items)... that 40% 60% win rate says something about eBay as a place to sell items. And it explains why I no longer sell on eBay -- I can't reasonably expect to make money selling in a place where I can buy at low prices.  However, for several reasons I am probably an exception to a more general rule.

by: IFindBugs

Still on the subject of saved searches, in my opinion ''eBay IS LEAVING A HUGE AMOUNT OF SALES / MONEY ON THE TABLE'' and I don't think they know it.

eBay focuses so much on the ''average consumer'' buyer and the eBay staff and management seem so disconnected from what business buyers (who are buying for inventory) need and how they operate, etc., that the eBay management does not seem to know what they don't know (i.e. an unknown unknown, per Donald Rumsfeld).

There are additional search criteria that could potentially massively help me find more items to buy in less time. I am not at liberty to speak publicly about the additional search criteria that would help me buy a lot more -- I also don't blab about my favorite fishing spot or all my many girlfriends (ha!!!!), etc.

However, since I am not an insider and I am not aware that BUYING 500 items per month gives me any insider access to eBay managers who are actually able to DO stuff, I feel powerless to get access to or create the search features I need. (I also have decades of IT experience so I understand there no such think as ''just'' a ''little'' feature enhancement.)

I am already spending WAYYYY too much time managing the searching, finding, and buying process.  (And those tasks are just the ''very tip of the iceberg'' of the work that has to happen when the packages arrive in my office.)

I have tried Internet and AI searching to find eBay features and/or third party services that can already provide the type of additional search features I need. However, eBay does not provide (that I can see, but I do not have access to their API) -- and AI also says that eBay does not provide -- the ''handles'' for the search features I am wanting to explore and hopefully successfully use to do a lot more buying.

None of the ''eBay search services'' I have found do much more than eBay does.  One of them does less than eBay does, but they can do it every 10 minutes, which can be massively useful for a very special kind of situation... but when I tested their service the actual search results (the items) were not at all what I was searching for. (And even their contact page -- of course they don't publish a phone number or a postal address or an email address -- failed to function properly to ask about that problem.)

The closest to a solution that I have come for my particular desired additional search features is one of the AI platforms telling me that a different AI platform is very good at developing automated eBay searches and then running the massive quantity of results (which are massive because eBay does not provide the means to filter on my particular specifications) through post-search-processing that filters (dumping 90% to get to the 10% that I am looking for) and organizes the items how I need them. Then the AI could format the results as a series of web pages (on my own web server; we host several of our own websites) so I can easily interact with the results in a browser environment thus giving me easy click-through to eBay itself to actually take action.

However, I really don't need another project on my to-do list.

If eBay is listening, I sure would like to have a conversation with the person who actually can authorize adding some search features (even if the features are ''hidden'').  

by: lstreeter

@IFindBugs, perhaps you could utilize AI to write a script to search ebay for the specific things you need to search for that Ebay doesn't provide.  

by: smallstuff

I use the saved search all the time with many (over 30) searches returning results daily.  My one gripe is that they often display results with similar looking images rather than matching words.  For example, if I enter an artists name ''smith'', the search does return results with that artists' name, but also returns pictorial results with similar looking names or books.  LiveAuctioneers search does the same.  I sometimes look for an artist ''hutter'' and get many results with a hut in the picture.

by: nmpu

The biggest limitation for eBay searches is that the keyword section has a maximum length. I now prefer https://flippah.net which has fewer limits and faster notification.

-vintage -antique -turquoise -jade -handmade can be shortened to -(vintage, antique, turquoise, jade, handmade)

I've noticed cases where I copy keywords directly from an active item's title, yet that item is not displayed anywhere in eBay search results. That's really unfortunate for the seller.

by: nmpu

@IFindBugs

Anyone can join the eBay Developers Program. All the documentation is public.

I've always argued that it's easier to teach an expert in their field to program rather than try to explain to a programmer what the expert wants. Study the documentation to see what's possible and then figure out how to maximize your daily call limit.

by: smallstuff

I was told that eBay and Google put a higher weight on the first few words in the search string and try to use that when listing new items for sale.  I don't know if that is true, but it seems to work better if I search for a short string with the primary target mentioned at the beginning of the string.  An example might be ''game used jersey''

by: Valaset

@iFindBugs  

At an EBAY Open a year ago, I met the head desginer of the EBAY search engine.  I have a way to reach him if you are interested.  Just contact me thru EBAY messages.  My ebay id is VALASET