March 29, 2008
Many of the questions I see are from people trying to get specific results on their Niche Site pages. The guide below is a great way to understand eBay’s search utility and how it relates to us. (from eBay)
| To search for | Do this | Example |
| Items where two or more keywords are present | Enter the keywords like you would search with a space between them | new DVD player Returns items with all three words in the title in any order |
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| Items containing certain words in a particular order | Place quotation marks around the group of words | “New York” Returns items with titles containing New York in that EXACT order only, but not those containing just New or just York or the words York New |
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| Items that don’t contain a certain word | Place a minus sign immediately before the word to be excluded (no space after the minus sign) | shirt blue –wool Returns items with titles containing the words shirt and blue but not containing the word wool |
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| Items that don’t contain several words | Place a minus sign before the list of words separated by commas (with no spaces after the minus sign and the commas) and put in parentheses | bowl -(black,green,purple) or bowl –black –green –purple Returns items with titles containing the word bowl but not containing the words black, green, and purple |
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| Items where one word or another is present | Enter keywords in parentheses separated by commas (no space after the commas) | (purse,handbag) Returns items whose titles contain either the word purse or handbag |
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| Items that contain words starting with a particular sequence of letters | Enter the letter sequence followed by an asterisk | book* Returns items whose titles contain words starting with book, such as books, bookshelf, and bookmark |
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| Items that contain only a specific spelling of a word Note: In some cases, eBay expands your search to include a plural and/or an alternate spelling of your search word(s). For example, if you were searching for book, you would receive search results with items containing the keyword book or the keyword books. Searching for grey would bring back items containing the keyword grey or the keyword gray. Use this command when you want an exact match. | Enter the keywords or phrases in quotes | “book” Returns only items with the exact word book and not items with the word books |
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| Items that match the exact words Note: In some cases, eBay automatically expands your search to include items based on the intent of your search rather than matching the exact keywords provided.If you do not want eBay to do this, then all you need to do is to put quotation marks around one of your keywords. For example, if you were searching action DVDs, you might type the keywords action DVD. This may bring back items that have both keywords action and DVD, as well as items that have the keyword action and are in the DVD category. If you entered “action” DVD, your results would include only items with the exact keywords action DVD and not the additional items in the DVD category with only the keyword action. Use this command when you want to match exact words. | Place quotes around any single keyword | “action” DVD Returns only items with the exact word action and DVD action “DVD” returns only items with the exact word DVD and the word action. |
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3 Responses to “8 Ways to Search eBay Listings with Different Results!”
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I can never remember all these different ways when I need to..so I printed a hard copy and now have it beside my computer…..thanks
Great tips, Mark - I didn’t know the one about either/or (purse,handbag) - I’ve wanted to do that before and ended up doing two searches. This is a good one!
I missed this post originally. Shows the benefit of linking to old posts from a viewers perspective. I’ve been cursing my inability to control searches in this way and this solves several challenges I’ve had over the last couple of days. Thanks as usual Mark.