Yet another ebay gripe..

[wafter]

... to add to the existing mountain

Earlier I knocked up a search for some bikes - the results defaulting to being ordered by "best match" as they always do, and returning 3,600 results.

Having waded through many pages I became aware that I was seeing some listings repeatedly, while other "sponsored" offerings were less / not relevant to my search criteria.

Switching the order to "ending soonest" reduced the amount of listings to 2000; so it seems that using the site's suggested "best match" search order also exposes you to 60% more listings that are either duplicates or irrelevant.

What a nasty, manipulative waste of time

 

[fossyant]

Hardly nasty, do you not press the 'sort button' every time you use it ?

 

[vickster]

If I was looking for a bike, I’d sort by nearest first or price

 

[a.twiddler]

The duplicate listings is something I'd noticed too. I wonder if there is some option as a seller to show your listing multiple times or if it's just a quirk of the system.

 

[Spiderweb]

I almost always sort ‘nearest first’, occasionally ‘ending soonest’ or ‘newly listed’ and filter to ‘auction only’.

 

[fossyant]

I've been looking at second hand projectors - the new stuff from Amazon widely lie about lumen and reading reviews, you can only use them in pitch black. Usual ebay searches coming up with all sorts, but get a bit more specific and you can find what you want - additional search on 'price' I picked one up for £30, where other sellers were £100-£200.

 

[sleuthey]

Some eBay items have different variants within one listing. Colour, size etc. when you sort by relevance it puts the most relevant variant first then other variants come further down the list. My assumption is if you sort by price or ending soonest then because the price for a white or yellow is identical there is no need to duplicate thus the list is rationalised. I like this as it saves me time. I also find Amazon does exactly the same.

 

[wafter]

Thanks all. My post was motivated less by a desire to discuss search tactics (I have my own convoluted but fairly precise approach; thanks ) and more out of irritation that ebay have apparently seen fit to make nearly half of their search results under default conditions irrelevant through duplication or the inclusion of "sponsored" content that doesn't fit the search criteria.

It's possible that the duplicates could be a glitch; however they don't appear to be the result of multiple variations within one listing as I'm looking at used bikes which are unsurprisingly one item per listing. Plus I distinctly recall seeing the same bike come up two or three times before I started playing with the search format.