posted on October 15, 2000 05:40:59 AM new
Just posted this to "where did they go".
INDEED WHERE DID THEY GO?!! Ebay has been losing info recently I think.
1) My listings could not be found in some searches or category listings. Right now I have an auction in open salts. When I click on this category on the top of my item listing, it shows 18 pages, newest first. I went to Page 18 (closing tonight), and my listing is missing. Yet SEARCH under antique open salt title & text gets the listing. I WENT A WHOLE WEEK BEING NOT FOUND IN THE CATEGORY SEARCH!! No wonder there is not that many hits.
2) Thursday night, I listed 2 new items and found by chance that search under TITLE only finds them while TITLE & TEXT cannot find them. I emailed support and voila, next morning both searches worked. Surprisingly, they also answered the next day, after it worked, nice letter, saying I did nothing wrong. Well I know I did not. Nevertheless it was an individually written or modified letter to the point, not a robo letter. That was the biggest surprise.
Main point here is that the different SEARCHes sometimes MISS the listings, I think especially when they are having problems or overloaded. They were implementing the new buyer-seller columns thing on the search results and having lots of problems with selling listings at the time.
Wonder how often this problem occurs. Can anyone comment? It would be USEFUL TO POST OCCASIONS WHEN PEOPLE FIND MISSES WITH THEIR SEARCHes. I sure don't want to miss half of the audience for a week like I did on the salts. If we post it, Ebay might watch and fix the problems more frequently.
posted on October 15, 2000 05:57:15 AM new
well,up until my recent relists (on 10/13)I've only had to wait once for 24 hours to get into the ENTIRE search system...but as of 7pm EST on 10/14,my present auctions were still not coming up under a DESCRIPTION search...if these were my usual 10 day auctions then I'd overlook it,but these are 3 DAYERS...I'm arguing via email with eBay and getting nowhere(as of last night that is)...however,I'm off to check again and fire off yet another email if they're still not there... :-/
posted on October 15, 2000 06:20:03 AM new
My auctions launched on the evening 13 Oct. are still not coming up under description search! 36 hours? C'mon
posted on October 15, 2000 06:24:13 AM new
Great example Debtred. Hope we get more examples. It's a killer for 3-day listings.
Overall, I think that because indexing for the various searches is something they do AFTER the listing, without specific time tables, it always lags. BUT when their CAPACITY is strained, they TAKE OUT SERVERS allocated to indexing, and put them to front line tasks like listing, bidding & searching. Most sellers like us will get upset if a listing takes 15 minutes to complete after you click CONTINUE. The penalty we pay is losting indexing, or incomplete SEARCH results. Rob Peter to pay Paul!
The correct way to fix this is for EBAY to spend more money & INCREASE THEIR TOTAL COMPUTING capacity. DO LESS "SYSTEM IMPROVEMENT" OR "MORE FEATURES". Just give us more capacity. Ebay's earnings will increase as will ours.
Please contribute your own examples of INCOMPLETE SEARCHES.
posted on October 15, 2000 07:12:27 AM new
This is strange. I search for my keyword on ebay under title and descriptions, nothing. But, some are showing up on AW's universal search! Now I'm confused.
posted on October 15, 2000 07:38:15 AM new
I've been wondering what has been going on because bidding has been so slow on items that usually are quite popular. Out of 8 items up for auction if I do a keyword search only 4 of them show up. I thought there was a pattern at first, but there isn't. Some of the auctions end today, some two days from now, some were listed early afternoon, some late evening. No rhyme nor reason to this but very disheartening.
posted on October 15, 2000 09:38:10 AM new
Items are indexed in the category index first, then in the title-only search database, and finally in the title-and-description search database (that one, because it indexes ALL of an auction, runs much slower, obviously).
If you're ever curious about where an item is showing up, you can type in the item # here:
