Ebay search engine bugs?

[retrogeekaustralia]

Hi Guys,

Has anyone else been noticing glitches in the search engine not displaying their listings properly? It has only been happening on a couple of my listing and it's probably one of the listings with the most sales so it's killing me.

For example one of these listings i have is usually around about the 4th spot on the first page when i search a particular keyword, but there were a few days last week when i would search it and it was nowhere to be found on the first page. Now this was on the default search option so best match was already selected, however when i pulled the the drop down menu down and selected best match manually the page would refresh and listing was showing up where it was suppose to, search the keyword again in the search field and it would dissapear.

Now since Sunday night two of my most important listings are having this issue, these ones have been around 2nd and 3rd place in the search result for months now. And when i search for it it is nowhere on the first page. Now close the top 10 listings here are all completely Aussie listings, there is 1 hong kong listings amongst them but when i select "Australia Only" from the search criteria my listing shows up in the spot it should be. Now i know this is definitely a glitch and not just a drop in my listing because in this view my two listings are between two other sellers, now when i switch back to worldwide these two sellers still appear close to the top of the page and mine are nowhere in between them.

This is really frustrating and costing me a lot of progress in getting my listing to the top of the results, i usually sell around 5-8 between the two of these items a day and now since Sunday night i havn't had a single purchase as no one can freaking see them!! It's not even about the imediate loss of money that i am worried about it is the progress of getting it to the top of the search results that i am going to lose, it took months of sales to get it that high and now a few days of no sales will just kill this listing off.

I've contacted eBay via chat, phone, email telling them to sort this out but they are useless! Telling me it could take days before they sort the bug out but it is days i don't have!! Unless they want to compensate for the next few months of sales when my listing drops even further down because it is invisible on the search results.

Sorry for the rant guys, i guess im just hoping maybe someone from ebay will see this and get there act together (highly doubt it though)

Is anyone else experiencing this issue lately because i have no idea what to do

[nirv_australia]

I'm experiencing a similar problem. See here ->http://community.ebay.com.au/topic/Powersellers/Listings-Appearing-Search/600160284

Extremely frustrating. As others have found, Ebay customer support is useless.

[davewil1964]

That link can only be read by powersellers. Not all of us on the general boards are.

[mylittleripple-store]

Having the same issue here. I've been the top seller of my category for at least the last 12 months. Most of my listings have been on the same category, on the first page, the top positions all these time, and now, all of a sudden, they are all gone, some random listings from other sellers are on the top spots right now. My sales have gradually gone down over the last few weeks and there's nothing I can do!!!

I called ebay today. I was told, I guess, inconsistent stories, by the customer service representative, I'm very sure they don't have a clue: 1. the best match is randomly displayed; 2. it based on the seller account and other factors; 3. many power sellers have many new listing come up, that's why they are on top....

Besides the 2nd point, the others don't make any sense. And I've met all the requirements to be ranked at the top spot: no negative feedback, top sales volume, top scores...etc   I also ended one of my listings and relisted it just to see whether new listings go to the top or not. It didn't....

I kept telling the representative that I know she is not responsible for this, but can she just pass on all the feedback about the search result glitch to the Search Team or whatever division responsible for it. Obviously she isn't going to do that. She said I can post it here and technical team will read the forum.....And I'm sure they don't read it...

I think we have to find the proper channel to make this heard by someone!!!

[retrogeekaustralia]

mylittleripple, can you please give me an example of one of your listings that is currently missing? and what search keyword you have tried to notice this issue?

[retrogeekaustralia]

actually if everyone who is currently experiencing this issue. If they can please list in this topic:

1: the item it is affecting

2: what search phrase you are using which you are noticing this issue.

In a lot of cases you can still find out what position you 'should' be in. And this is the best way to notify ebay of the this actually being a glitch. Otherwise, all they are going to do is think you a complaining that your listing has dropped legitimately.

[davewil1964]

I don't check my listings. Some sell, some don't. Presumably the longer they don't sell the lower they go in BM (impressions?).

I only ever search by P+P - Lowest first, and I can't imagine any experienced buyer using BM as a sort option. Maybe newbies, but most sellers seem to want to be able to block them anyway.

[retrogeekaustralia]

I think the majority of my sales are from my listings that are high in best match. Its the ones that have now disappeared completely from best match that have now hit a brick wall.

[mylittleripple-store]

my listings were all top ranking (always the top 1-3 in best match, the rest are on the same 1st page), now they are all gone from the 1st page, a couple come up on 2nd page. Over the year, I always use the same keyword to check....

[genrel]

From a buyer's point of view, it took me 12 mins to find "Inkstands" the other day. Every time I typed it in and pressed search, I got "0 items found"..in both listed items and completed. Then I broke the word in two and found some listings however I had found "Inkstand" before as one word so know something was wrong. It took numerous attempts to finally get a result...they were there but the search engine was refusing to find them. Does anyone honestly think ordinary buyers are going to do what I did ...keep trying? I think most will give up after the first attempt. How many other words won't the search engine recognise or won't attempt to find? This is costing us sales and eBay's bottom line...however someone appears to be asleep at the wheel in eBay.

[novobox2012]

I found there must be something wrong about search engine.

The Best match order in store is totally different it on ebay.

One of my best sell listing 's best match result is two pages behand a listing which hasn't been bought over 2 monthes.

And I search some key words on different computers, the relusts are different.