Wildcard searches discontinued from 5 November

[wizzkids]

Just received an e-mail from eBay asking me to edit my wildcard searches because wildcards will no longer be supported after 5 November. The reason given is because the eBay search facility has been "improved". This sounds like eyewash. What do you think is the real reason eBay has removed wildcard searches?

[zanadoo_56]

They've installed new software and for some reason wildcards won't work....and they don't know how to fix it?

Well that's my theory..... B-)

[found-in-australia]

Quote: "We've made many recent improvements to our search capabilities on eBay that now take into account many spelling variations."

That "many" doesn't include some rather obvious ones like "programme" and "program" at this stage on the Australian site.

Beyond that it is not likely to take into account misspellings and words running into each other (ie: no spaces between the words), both of which can be caught using the correctly targetted wildcard search, which result in sales that may not otherwise occur.

[psychic_pilot]

let's hope they work it out, i use wildcard searches constantly..

[Anonymous]

Completely agree. How on earth is this an "improvement"? Do those responsible for this change ever actually use ebay to search for items?

I use wildcards to weed out a number of misspellings and to refine some searches.

Please, ebay return our wildcards!

[Anonymous]

Further to my above comment, I now find that one wildcard search I've been using for years now requires three separate searches to achieve an inferior result. 

Progress? "Improvement"? Hah!

Ebay, if any one in authority is reading this, please change it back. Now.

[digital*ghost]

Quote: "We've made many recent improvements to our search capabilities on eBay that now take into account many spelling variations."

The new search engine blows. 😐 I entered a search last night with very specific terms and got so many irrelevant results it was ridiculous. 

Note to eBay - purple and blue are not spelling variations of silver. 

[old_nerd]

My searches have been improved - each one is _so_ much more targetted - what I used to catch in one wildcard search has now taken me over an hour to rebuild into 7 seperate seaches (and still not get the same result).

By improved I think they mean - 'made it more difficult for you dear buyer that perhaps you will conside looking elsewhere".

Seriously ebay are you guys for real, do you even think about your users?  Bring back wildcards.

[henryjnr]

I find this has dramatcially hindered my buying as like the other comments, I need multiple searches to achieve a lesser result with obvious impact on the sellers when I can't find the items.

As wildcard searches require more processing power and take longer to run I suspect this has been how they have improved the speed. Simplify the search so that results come back quicker even if they aren't as useful.

It also makes the performance and usage figures look good, quicker results, thereby showing search speed improvement, and more searches performed, as we struggle to find items, but it does make it look like there are more buyers. In the commercial world we suspect see this as management cooking the books to make them look good.

cheers

gm

[rjp765]

I constantly use(d) wildcards to filter out erroneous and superfluous results.

I now find myself having to run multiple searches to find out the bad results and then re run again.

Not an improvement.......

The contents of the email that I received explaining how 'good' the new search is were the rantings of a mad man.  How could ebay even consider that making the buyer do more work would be more efficient?  Unless they want more searches?

I've given up running most of my standard searches.

I'm off to gumtree......