Advanced Search Commands for Better eBay Module Results
You can maximize the results of an eBay search by using advanced search commands on eBay.com and in your Squidoo eBay module. Better search results will help you find what you want quickly, and most importantly, help you recommend the items your lens visitors want the most.
Included in this Tutorial:
This lens will cover these search commands to get the most from your search:
The Best Tip
One of the best tips I can give you, is to always complete your search in eBay first in order to be able to glance down the list. Seeing a long list of items that return from a search help you to spot unrelated items that may inch in on your lens without you noticing. From these unrelated items, you can often pick out some way to exclude them from the results you want, like excluding words or limiting your category. It is ALWAYS worth checking.
A Basic Keyword Search
The most basic of searches is simply entering one or more words to search for: dishThis is a keyword search. eBay looks at your search and finds items it thinks you may be interested in. The results will include items with the word in the title (or description if you chose) and items with that keyword.
Ebay will search for this word, but will also take the liberty of searching variants of this word that it assumes you would also be interested in like dishes, so you need not add that to your search. However, eBay may not catch odd plurals like octopus/octopi. If you wish for eBay to avoid expanding your search, and to take your search quite literally, you must put the word in quotation marks:
"dish"
But, if you are limiting yourself to these simple searches, you are doing yourself a distinct disservice.
Wildcards
Wildcard is a term that describes a placeholder. eBay supports search with the * wildcard, which means that a * in your search would represent any number of characters in that position.For example, if you search term is
olymp*
then your results would include auctions having any of these words in the subject:
olympic, olympics, olympus, olympia, olympian, olympiade, olymphilex, olympiad, olympique, olympikids, olympos, ...
Wildcards can appear anywhere in the word as long as there are at least two characters before it.
So you can use a wildcard to cover common misspellings like accordian which should read accordion, by using accordi*n.
TIP #1: Use wildcards to an find uncommon plural of items that eBay may not catch.
TIP #2: Use wildcards on a year to set a decade for the item. For instance if you want smurf items from the 1980s, you can search smurf 198*.
smurf 198*
eBay search results for search term smurf 198*, giving you a better chance at items from the 1980s.
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand by
eBay Search Links
- eBay: Using Search Commands
- eBay: Using Search Commands
- eBay: Tips for Searching
- eBay: Tips for Searching
The Exact Phrase Search
The Exact Phrase Search is one that many people do commonly use. If you are searching for a exact phrase, a few words in that particular order, then you should put them in quotation marks for more accurate results.Say you are searching for items related to the music group Jackson 5.
Searching simply
jackson 5
may also bring you results like these:
5 Michael Jackson buttons
Chad Jackson - Patriots - lot of 5 cards
Nike Dunk 4.5 Bo Jackson Air Trainers
Reggie Jackson Lot Of 5 single cards
2 Joe Jackson tickets 5/11/08
5 Vintage Jackson China Coffee Cups
However, a search of "jackson 5" is much more likely to bring you the results you want.
jackson 5
Searching jackson 5 may lead to relevant results, however too often unrelated items sneak in.
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand by"jackson 5"
Searching "jackson 5" will have better results. They may not always be relevant, but your odds are much better.
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand byUse the Categories
Think about whether all of the potentially good results for the search you have in mind would come from one category, as it is often a way of filtering out junk from other categories.
The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher
The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 07/06/2009)
An essential guide for anyone who conducts research on the Internet-including librarians, teachers, students, business professionals, and writers-this fully revised handbook details what users must know to take full advantage of Internet search tools and resources. From emerging search tools Ask.com and Windows Live to standbys Google and Yahoo!, the major search engines and their myriad of services are thoroughly discussed. Recent additions to the Internet realm-RSS feeds, podcasts, alert services, wikis, and blogs-are explained, as well as tried-and-true search tools, including web directories, newsgroups, and image resources. For those with little to moderate searching experience, friendly, easy-to-follow guidelines to the world of Web research are provided, while experienced searchers will discover new perspectives on content and techniques.
The OR Search
In order to do one search that finds the results of either of two words(or phrases), you can use the OR search.
To enter an OR search, within parenthesis, enter the words you want included separated by a comma.
Sometimes you want to add to that OR search. Say you are looking for quilt racks, but as you search ebay, you notice that some people use the term stand while many others use rack. In order to get the best results, we will want to search for quilt and either rack or stand. We would use:
quilt (rack,stand)
You can incorporate phrases, wildcards, as well as AND searches within the OR search. For example:
("miley cyrus","hannah montana")
(coach bag, prada)
(africa*,egypt*) coin*
eBay Search Tip
If you are doing a search on something with a number like Jackson 5, you may also wish to search for the number spelled out:
("jackson 5","jackson five")
eBay Books
Don't Forget...Misspellings
Don't make the mistake of forgetting that people aren't perfect. Often sellers misspell things in their auctions. Adding a misspelling into your search may bring amazing bargains to your visitors that they may not have otherwise seen.
Check out these guys who can't spell MUPPET...
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand byWhat is your most used search operator?
The Exclusion Search (the NOT search)
The exclusion search, or the NOT search, is extremely handy to exclude unrelated, or unwanted items from your search results. Using the minus sign immediately before a term excluding all items with that word in it.Sometimes you know that you want to exclude a word for the purposes of getting the items you want. For example, I know that I want to search for ghau pendant, however, I do not want Tibetan silver, which I have read may have lead in it. I know I want to try to exclude silver from Tibet. A search term cannot guarantee that the silver isn't Tibetan, but it can guarantee that it doesn't have Tibet in the title.
So I would search
ghau pendant -tibetan
But, I find that some sellers just enter Tibet Silver, so I change it to:
ghau pendant -tibet -tibetan
Which is exactly the same as:
ghau pendant -(tibet,tibetan)
Since the words are so alike, another choice would be
ghau pendant -tibet*
Note that if you are searching title and description, excluding a word that may be in description may keep good results out or your search. So if the seller put something like "this is 100% Sterling Silver, not Tibetan silver" into their description, it will not show in your results.
ghau pendant
eBay search results for ghau pendant
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand byghau pendant -tibet*
eBay search results for ghau pendant -tibet*
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand byHow to Get Mutually Exclusive eBay Modules
One trick to get mutually exclusive searches is to insist a word be in one searches results, but specifically exclude it from the other.
For example, say you have a lens on cuff links, you may notice that sometimes people post them as 'cufflinks' while others post 'cuff links'. You can use this to your advantage to separate the searches:
"cuff links" -cufflinks
cufflinks -"cuff links"
These searches will both find similar items, all cufflinks, but they will not return the exact same items. A sample of these search results are shown below.
Such luck may not always be the case. Sometimes you must be more creative. These searches will also always return different results:
cuff links silver
cuff links -silver
Another option for mutually exclusive searches may be to search a term in different categories, although this may sometimes return items listed in both categories (as sellers have the option of posting an auction to multiple categories, for an additional price of course).
"cuff links" -cufflinks
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand bycufflinks -"cuff links"
Since these results are different then the ones in the module above, you can use two eBay modules on one page giving different content.
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand byIf using the RSS module...
So, play around with your search to make it great. Remember the better your results are, and the closer they relate to your lens, the more sales you will generate.
Searching Is Important!
eBay Search Tips
Do you have any eBay search tips that you think would be helpful for other lensmasters? Do you have any questions on how to get the results you are looking for?
paperfacets wrote...
This is tech that has been around but it's new to me! Thanks for offering it in this handy lens for looking up later.
Posted June 24, 2009
Frankster wrote...
Thank you for the great advice. I needed it! Bear hugs, Frankie
Posted June 19, 2009
AngryApple wrote...
Fantastic advice! Thanks kab! Now to go back and edit some of those ebay modules.. :)
Posted May 11, 2009
gods_grace_notes wrote...
I'm just beginning to learn my way around the eBay module... this is great info for helping me to find the products I want to include in my crafting tutorials. Thanks for your hard work!
Connie
: )
Posted May 05, 2009
WritingforYourWealth wrote...
Great tips. I haven't done much with ebay modules yet, but I can see I should be doing them better, heh.
Posted September 15, 2008
Mickie_G wrote...
Yes, a really good lens. Thank you for your very hard work.
Posted September 05, 2008
Mar1anneC wrote...
Super freakin' awesome lens. 5 stars. Just what I needed to know to do a OR operator ohttp://www.squidoo.com/images/btn-save.gifn my Ebay results on my http://squidoo.com/knitsquare ebay module. I used knitting (loom,needles, yarn, basket, winder)
Posted September 02, 2008
sisterra wrote...
Great info. Thank you for taking the time to put it together.
Posted August 24, 2008
KimGiancaterino wrote...
Great info! I'm featuring this on my eBay shopping 'how-to' lens.
Posted July 17, 2008
Treasures-By-Brenda wrote...
Hi, thanks for the information about RSS feeds and the eBay module. I have just started using the RSS feeds this week.
Brenda
Posted July 16, 2008
The_Book_Garden wrote...
Hey! Thanks for the write up and mention of my Ebay RSS Feeds tutorial. I'd just like to add, you can now use this with your squidoo campaign and custom ID too, so you don't even have to sign up to be an ebay affiliate!
Posted June 20, 2008
kiwisoutback wrote...
Ah, the elusive eBay search...I actually never knew about the * wildcard search, but that will come in handy! Great lens!
Posted May 03, 2008
The_Book_Garden wrote...
Some great tips for getting the best search results, I've lensrolled this to my ebay rss tutorial lens! :)
Posted April 28, 2008
rwoman wrote...
Super advice. I've bookmarked this to come back and study later when I time to implement it!
Posted April 28, 2008
JackieLee wrote...
Great lens. I have started using my ebay affiliate RSS in the rss module lately. I did not know how to get exactly the results I wanted. I learned a lot here. Thanks.
Posted April 21, 2008
rosachs wrote
I've been helping buyers with eBay searches for years, and this is a great summation of what usually takes me many emails to convey -- EXCELLENT!! Now check out my lenses on profitable eBay selling -- if I can make PowerSeller, anyone can! :)
Posted April 05, 2008
The_Book_Garden wrote...
Hey,
Nice intro to ebay searching! Thanks also for including a link to my page about using RSS feeds for ebay! :)
Posted March 02, 2008
