Coming soon: changes to search

StaffsSW

Today we announced that the way search works will be changing later this week. The changes will return more items for most queries and revise the search page layouts.

Many of you will have questions and concerns and I’ll try to answer those here.

You will find some useful information in these links too:

1. A summary of the changes can be seen at http://pages.ebay.co.uk/newsearch/index.html

2. You can try a preview of the changes at http://playground.ebay.co.uk/

3. A full FAQ is http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/find/search-faqs.html

While everyone is getting used to the new system, it will be possible to switch to and from the old and new search within the search results pages. That said the old search will retired soon so we strongly encourage you to try the new search and become familiar with it.

Thanks
Jack

Source - http://forums.ebay.co.uk/thread.jspa?threadID=1200223860



Just what we need. Months of buyers and sellers complaining that the "new" search does not work, yet eBay steamroller the changes into place. There is a huge tutorial on how the search is meant to work, but is every potential buyer going to read it?

There are also far too many adverts on the new structure, but I guess if they are going be losing sales hand over fist, then they will need to fill the revenue gaps.

frivolous_fay

Further changes, or the same changes rolled out to everyone? I'm so confused....
FGS, let the dust settle!!

imagia

I was rather hoping they wouldn't be "retiring" the old search system. I can't stand the new one. Are e**y now trying to discourage buyers from staying on the site long enough to find something? Because that's what it does for me! Well done e**y! :T

iieee

I'm going to be really unpopular and say I like some of these changes!!

- being able to select more than one filter option - I've wanted this for ages!! Especially when looking for clothes.
- window shopping - took me ages to figure out how to do it, but quite nifty
- they've put the page links at the top of the search results!!! I am forever forgetting to look past the 1st page in the current search because they put this below the google ads and I always forget and think there's only one page.

So no complaints here. And I was prepared to.

cg1982

can we opt out as my search is like this at the moment i hate it

judyjetson

Mine changed to the new search yesterday and it's horrific. I was searching for a specific book, put a couple of key words in and got no results. I tried again, keeping one key word and using another. Hey presto, there was the book I was looking for - with all the key words in from the original search.

I've also found, and it might just be me, but with the old search I've put the singular of a word in and it will throw up items ending in s and 's but that hasn't been happening for me with the new search.

I've managed to get the old search back, but I've no idea how I did it.

Creosote

Just great, replace a search that works and has been used for a long time with something that's a total mess that can't find what i want, or throws back a list of irrelevant stuff that seems unrelated to my search.

While you get used to the new system, you’ll be able to switch to and from the old and new systems from within the search results pages. This ‘opt out’ will last for 4 weeks, after which the old search system will be retired.

So 4 weeks till sells on ebay just collapse, wonderful... I wonder what the shareholders will think when the see less monies from lower fvf revenue?
Hopefully it'll still be possible to carry our old style searches after the old system is officially "retired" by messing around with the old search url: http://search.ebay.co.uk/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=item+name+here+and+here

thatsfabulous

If anyone is looking for the Buy it now button in searchs-
Its under Search options and click on Buying format and its there. It taken me a while to find.

Contains_Mild_Peril

judgejaq wrote: »

Mine changed to the new search yesterday and it's horrific. I was searching for a specific book, put a couple of key words in and got no results. I tried again, keeping one key word and using another. Hey presto, there was the book I was looking for - with all the key words in from the original search.

I've also found, and it might just be me, but with the old search I've put the singular of a word in and it will throw up items ending in s and 's but that hasn't been happening for me with the new search.

I've managed to get the old search back, but I've no idea how I did it.

I found that with the old system, most searches would show both singular and plural when only one was entered, but a (seemingly random) few did not. The new system's a mess. According to eBay "Previously, buyers only saw search results where item title keywords exactly matched their search terms. For example, a search for a broad term like ‘MP3 Players’ would not return items with specific titles like ‘Apple iPod Nano 8GB’. Search now looks at the category an item is listed in and any item specifics the seller provides so that buyers are more likely to find what they want." which is al very well in theory, but buyers who are looking for something specific still want to be able to find it using specific keywords instead of having to faff around with various different options or find themselves faced with pages and pages of completely irrelevant results. I'm not sure when the changes started but I do remember noticing that, completely without warning, I was finding that search results often did not match the keywords I entered nor what I was actually looking for. Sensible stuff like including results for both "photo" and "photograph" when either word is entered would be fine, but some of the results are just
I do actually agree that some changes, like allowing multiple filter choices, are a good idea but can't they introduce changes one at a time so they can more clearly see which work and which just create chaos?

tintinlostsnowy

it's bloomin rubbish
thankfully i found the opt out button:D
although it's only a temporary repreive:eek:

hopefully it will get sorted and easier to use (very doubtful) before it's compulsory

StaffsSW

An interesting side effect of the new search is that it is now pulling out common misspellings into the displayed results.

That'll probably spell the end of Fatfingers and Goofbay then. No pun intended...