Listing Tip - regarding plurals

cosmokramer2004

Just a quick tip regarding maximising search exposure for items on Ebay.

They recently changed their search engine to also search for the plural of the search terms by default.. So a search for "book" will also return listings with titles including the word "books". However, the reverse is not true. A search for "books" will not return items with only the word "book" in the title!

Therefore, when you are deciding on your listing title it would be wise to include the singular version of the word - and if you do there is no need to also include the plural, allowing yourself more characters for other relevant keywords.

There's probably a better way of saying that, but I think it makes sense.

tigs78

Along the same lines...

Apparently you are not allowed to add other brands in your listings to optimise search results in your favour eg) My sister put a Bag on with the title "Firetrap bag - like diesel/fcuk". Her listing was removed by e-bay after less than one day as she had violated this unknown policy. She is not a power seller with a huge turnover of these items, it was a one off listing of a genuine item.

mah_jong

tigs78 wrote:

Along the same lines...

Apparently you are not allowed to add other brands in your listings to optimise search results in your favour eg) My sister put a Bag on with the title "Firetrap bag - like diesel/fcuk". Her listing was removed by e-bay after less than one day as she had violated this unknown policy. She is not a power seller with a huge turnover of these items, it was a one off listing of a genuine item.

I must say I dislike listing like these......BUT sucumbed to it after a small brand name did not sell....the majority of people had not heard of it!

If you have never heard of firetrap ......... ( I hadn't !!)

BFG_2

Similar is when people list something and tell you what it is not
Eg "Playstation 2 Game FIFA 2005 - not Xbox or Nintendo".

Let's be honest, who would be lookign for xbox if they already had a ps2 (and vice versa)

Binxy

On a similar vein (if slightly off original topic, sorry )

Have you ever noticed an item that appears in a search you did for no apparent reason? If you highlight with a left click the seemingly blank white space, millions of words come up thereby letting the item appear in numerous other searches.

Sneeky, sneeky :rolleyes:

stavros_2

tigs78 wrote:

Along the same lines...

Apparently you are not allowed to add other brands in your listings to optimise search results in your favour eg) My sister put a Bag on with the title "Firetrap bag - like diesel/fcuk". Her listing was removed by e-bay after less than one day as she had violated this unknown policy. She is not a power seller with a huge turnover of these items, it was a one off listing of a genuine item.

I hate it when people but "not/like some brand" in their listings. If I'm searching for something particular, e.g fcuk, then I don't want 50 other items that I have to read through to find the things I'm looking for.

If people want to get around this I suggest they search excluding words like "like" and "not", e.g. search for "fcuk -(like, not)".

Interestingly I just did a quick search for how many items had not or like in the title: "43979 items found for (not, like)"

Sofa_Sogood

cosmokramer2004 wrote:

There's probably a better way of saying that, but I think it makes sense.

Makes sense to me funnily enough

But then there's the other side of the coin. A friend of mine asked me to look out for Lulu Guinness stuff (must say I like it myself but can't justify buying any of it, apart from maybe a dust bag but because of the spelling, I have to look in Lulu Guinness and Lulu Guiness

The sellers mispell stuff, but shouldn't the Guinness (with 2 n's) show up Guiness (with 1 n) too? Or am I still as confused as always?

It also throws up beer mats and the like lol. I'll have to learn things like stavros has just posted. All the minus palaver

stavros_2

Sofa_Sogood wrote:

Makes sense to me funnily enough

But then there's the other side of the coin. A friend of mine asked me to look out for Lulu Guinness stuff (must say I like it myself but can't justify buying any of it, apart from maybe a dust bag but because of the spelling, I have to look in Lulu Guinness and Lulu Guiness

The sellers mispell stuff, but shouldn't the Guinness (with 2 n's) show up Guiness (with 1 n) too? Or am I still as confused as always?

It also throws up beer mats and the like lol. I'll have to learn things like stavros has just posted. All the minus palaver

if you want to search for lulu guiness and lulu guiness at the same time then search for: lulu (guiness, guinness)

Sofa_Sogood

stavros wrote:

if you want to search for lulu guiness and lulu guiness at the same time then search for: lulu (guiness, guinness)

Thanks again.

I doubt if I'll remember all the commas, minuses etc etc lol. So if someone's looking for a book or two, is it book (books) ?

cosmokramer2004

Sofa_Sogood wrote:

Makes sense to me funnily enough

But then there's the other side of the coin. A friend of mine asked me to look out for Lulu Guinness stuff (must say I like it myself but can't justify buying any of it, apart from maybe a dust bag but because of the spelling, I have to look in Lulu Guinness and Lulu Guiness

The sellers mispell stuff, but shouldn't the Guinness (with 2 n's) show up Guiness (with 1 n) too? Or am I still as confused as always?

It also throws up beer mats and the like lol. I'll have to learn things like stavros has just posted. All the minus palaver

That sounds like a job for https://www.fatfingers.com - Try putting "lulu guiness" into that and you'll be rolling about in piles of luluy guinessy goodness.

cosmokramer2004

Ian_Griffiths wrote:

(book, books)

The point is that you don't need to search OR list with "book" and "books" in your titles or search terms. (only the word "book" is required)

A search for "book" will find all items with the word BOOK or the word BOOKS in the title.