eBay Search & Saved Search Emails Autocorrect Problems
eBay users report problems with search results and saved search emails including irrelevant results due to what appears to be an autocorrect snafu.
getting very frustrated with the eBay search the last couple days. For no reason it keeps changing all my searches - even saved ones - to different spellings.
A couple examples (maybe it's just spellings with an "o")
Ja Morant gets changed to Ja Marant
Holo Heros gets changed to Halo Heroes
Fractor changed to raptor
Logo to Lego
We just did a search in our own store and noted that eBay changed the search word(s) automatically. We typed in Kang (a Marvel character) and eBay changed the search word to "King" . This changed the results from 2 to 52.
If this happens on the site search too it might explain the lack of views or does eBay really think they know what is in the searchers mind ? There may be many reasons why sales and views are down but eBay inserting in what the AI thinks you are searching for does not help.
For some reason when I search for "Prusament" and then select "Newly listed" is changes my search term to "presadent" then fails to find anything and searches "President" instead bizarrely.
One very helpful community member suggested as a possible workaround to put the keyword in quotes.
I have seen an uptick in the number of complaints about the auto-correction of search keywords, so it is certainly possible that eBay has changed something recently that has resulted in more unwanted "corrections".
You can bypass the auto-correction by putting one of your search keywords in quotes, like this:
It appears there is also a similar and likely related issue impacting saved search emails, where users are being inundated with irrelevant items due to eBay either autocorrecting or searching on partial character matches for the saved search term.
As of Oct 10th... saves searches are horrible.
I search specific single word terms... and most of the time nothing would show up in a day. sometimes I'd only get a notification once a month when someone listed something with that title.As of Yesterday and today I'm getting emails with tens of thousands of results that are not something I've saved as a search. None of the "results" are my search query. What they are is a partial match of the word. For example, if I search for "lindows" which is an old software product, I'm getting 39,303 results for anything with the term "indows".
I didn't search for "indows" I searched for "lindows".
Do not ruin the saved search feature by giving me almost 40,000 false positives.
This isn't an issue when searching the website. It's ONLY an issue with what's emailed to me from my saved search.
If I search "rhel" on ebay, I get 35 results.
My email notification for my "rhel" saved search had 10,072 results.
I've noticed the exact same problem that obsidiansecurity pointed out.
I have many saved searches with all kinds of queries and strings, and from the "Saved Searches" page they work as they are supposed to. But the emails I'm now getting are outrageously off, searching for strings and phrases that are similar to but not matching my saved search. For instance, searching for "solarus" will bring up hundreds of items containing "solaris" and so on. But it's only in the saved search email notifications.
It also appears to be a possibly global issue, with similar reports posted in the UK community as well.
I have a number of very specific saved searches but eBay appear to have decided to send me all sorts of stuff that doesn't correspond with my saved searches. I thought the idea of saved searches was that they saved you the bother of wading through loads of items in which you had no interest. Now I seemingly have to do that anyway. What is going on? Anybody know?
I've had an ebay alert for Weepop, an indiepop record label for about 4 years. It has always worked correctly - and has resulted in me buying releases I didn't already have whenever they've come up.
Now, suddenly, something in the alert system has changed and I'm getting daily emails from said alert.
580 matches today. A similar number of matches daily where before there would'nt be.
Not only does this mean that I'm unlikely to find what I'm looking for, whereas before, I was taken straight to it, but, even worse, when I click through, I get the message : "Showing results for We Pop. Search instead for Weepop"
What the..........?Why is my alert suddenly broken after working correctly for years - and please, can someone fix this error? (Written in the vain hope that some ebay staff get to read this).
My search, running for years to find memorabilia from the early 20th Century relating to a Victorian TB recovery hospital, now brings back horror DVDs. Lots of them. It does bring back the items I'm looking for, but I don't want to search through a load of junk for items I want to buy.
The 'other things I might be interested in' are more DVDs. I don't want DVDs. I've never bought a DVD from eBay, horror or otherwise. It used to show me postcards from the area local to the hospital, and I frequently purchased them.
Search is irreparably broken.
Are you having problems with eBay autocorrecting searches? Let us know in the comments below!
