Broken Or Impaired By Design Ebay Stamps Category Search

As some users may already be painfully aware, ebay has been touting "improved search". The results in the Stamps category could deter buyers and devastate sellers. Try the following search:

1. open the US ebay.com in a browser.
2. Navigate to the Stamps category. Has anyone noticed that the drop down list is too short and extra clicks are required to expose "Stamps".
3. Search for "500". (The quotes are not needed in the search. Unfortunately, ebay believes that key words will work, but doesn't understand that stamp key words are usually catalog numbers.
4. In the left panel, navigate to "United States" under "Stamps".
5. Now try to navigate to "1901-Now: Used".



At this point, a buyer looking for a used US Scott 500, may find some other way to reach the category, give up or go to some other site. While it may be possible other posters to offer "advice" on how to search ebay or what other site to use, such help will not be seen by the most potential stamp buyers viewing ebay. Also, notice how poorly search for "500" as a Scott number works on ebay.

The left panel has several shortcomings. First, is including irrelevant categories. How does " ebay Motors" or "Business & Industrial" relate to stamps. Why do they appear in the left panel at all? I know that ebay loves out of category searches, but I don't believe that buyers share the love.

The second shortcoming is that the list of subcategories under "United States" is incomplete. There is no way to expand the subcategory list in the same manner as the "Show More" will expand the irrelevant list of other non-stamp categories.

The Search at the top of the page allows navigation to categories above, but not to ones at the same level or below. No help here.

It is sometimes, but not always possible, to open a specific listing and navigate to "United States Stamps" category where more subcategories appear without irrelevant non-stamp categories. By this time, many buyers will have dropped out.



Also, the check boxes below the useless Guaranteed Delivery radio buttons may not be helpful. It is not clear how many sellers manage to use matching item specifics with continually morphing descriptions, some considered illiterate by philatelists, and unsupported in third party applications.

Using the check boxes may be an exercise in futility if only a small fraction of potential matches are exposed.

The only truly useful check boxes are "Sold Listings" or "Completed Listings".

Finally, a couple of times, searches have morphed into "Virtual Categories" showing left panel choices not fully related to the original category because some filter was incorporated limiting search to something like "collectible" items. If that is the case, who decides? Why does search have to hide? Does ebay have something to hide?

ebay also eliminated the "time listed" field when you display results by category or search. This makes it near impossible to view the newly listed items since you last viewed the category (unless you search at the same time each day and rely on the "newly listed" flag). If you run a search every few days, you are out of luck.

Whoever designed the ebay stamp pages knows nothing about stamp collectors. I am always getting pages with buttons to click on to search by denomination and color. That might be useful on occasion I suppose but the designer apparently thought that was a major deal.

It's even worse if you try to search on your phone...if you navigate into a specific category and try to search, it conducts a site-wide search making it impossible to find anything.

Plus there are many cases where you can check boxes and you'll get zero or very limited results. Stores will report lists without everything in them. And so on.

This is intentional, guessed to be recovery mode since near everyone in all categories close auctions Sunday nights nowadays. The simple fix is to not visit ebay Mondays and/or Tuesdays when they're doing this. Very little if any new stuff appears with the limited items shown Monday/Tuesday.

ebay seems to be back to normal at the time of this writing, as has been typical for quite some time now.

SPQR, I know exactly what you mean. My clumsy workaround to this problem has been, when I execute a frequently-run category search, to open an item near the top of the hit list that has some eye-catching quality to it (for covers, e.g., a striking illustration, bright color, or something similar) that will grab my attention as having already been read the next time I'm scrolling through dozens or hundreds of pages of results. Sort of like leaving a blaze mark on a tree.

The list of subcategories may only includes those subcategories that contain listings that match your "500" search.

No, I didn't forget about the subcategories-search match bug. In this case I wanted to search for 500 in Unused: 1900-1940 and then flip to Used:1900-Now. I know for sure that some used US Scott 500 are listed and would have appeared in search results under Stamps > United States. However, I had forgotten to mention the search match bug. Suppose that a stamp is infrequently offered or sold. Because it is difficult to initiate a search for a sold stamp, it is more convenient to start by looking for active listings. If no results are returned, ebay may return some unrelated out of category results. Clicking on the check box for sold listings will be unlikely to reach the category where any sold examples would be found, assuming a recent sale.

Another takeaway from seeing blatant gaffes in ebay search is the folly of offshore software development by teams not familiar with nuances American language or culture, not to mention lack of familiarity with unique one-of-a-kind collectibles.

Many of us love to hate ebay. Obviously ebay has been both a boon and a bust to the stamp collecting hobby and this can often polarize our opinions. But as the large number of negative threads in this forum attest; we often paint ebay as an evil entity which cares less about us. We should first recognize that the majority of corporations in the US are not mega-giant companies like ebay but instead they are small 'mom-and-pop' companies with less than 75-100 employees.

But the size of the corporation aside, who really owns these public companies? The shareholders. And who are the shareholders? People like you and me. ebay answers to, and works for, its shareholders. Shareholders expect to see the company make a profit so the stock valuation rises and they might see a dividend check. So everything that ebay does is to increase their stock valuation and profit. Period. There is no reason to speculate about the reason that ebay changed its search functionality. There is no reason to make assumptions about their terms and conditions. There is no need for conjecture at all; everything they do is in support of making a profit and increasing their stock value.

The truth about ebay is that their stock has actually outperformed the S&P 500 Index over the last 3, 5, and 10 year periods. But there are some challenges ahead for ebay; when they spun off PayPal they lost a very healthy part of their business. Since the spin off, meaningful growth has been difficult for ebay. Their GMV (gross merchandise volume) has not been increasing much, over the last two years it has only increased from $83 billion to $85 billion. Additionally retail competitors like Amazon.com and Wal-Mart Stores continue to grow at a much faster rate than ebay. So ebay has been fielding a lot of investor questions about its lack of stronger growth.

So ebay management has been driving towards things that will pump up marketplace growth and e-commerce market share. One of those things they call "structured data," where ebay is using AI (artificial intelligence) to improve search and better organize the one billion listings they handle on a daily basis. This AI is designed to showcase items as products as opposed to listings. They want people to think of turning to ebay to buy new products, they do not want to promote ebay as a place for people to sell their old crap. Their push for the last 2 years has been to transform its image from an auction site to a mainstream retailer.

Will this transition work? I have no idea but I am quite certain that they are headed for a show down with Amazon and Walmart. And without question it leaves those of us who counted on ebay as a good place to sell our second hand stuff yearning for the 'old days' when it was tailored to online auction activities. As ebay transitions more and more towards being a mainstream retailer, we will see changes to the way they do business that negatively affects our hobby. There is no point in lamenting how ebay used to be, they are simply doing what their shareholder want; increased profits and stock valuation. I recommend that we all enjoy ebay now as it is, the changes will continue over the next few years and these changes will continue to erode the value of ebay for our hobby.
Don

The competing sites are not really investing in their products either -- APS Stampstore, Hipstamp, etc.

All sites have issues with searches but ebay is still better than all I have used, Hipstamp has talked about some features like saved searches, etc.

ebay has been great to the hobby.

Don well written and explains the problem that we will see in the future .

I believe this annoying change is a relatively recent one. At one point, when you drilled down or up via the left-hand pane, only subcategories within the tree you were searching were shown... as it should be.

Now, ebay goes out of its way to extend your search across all of ebay, or to categories that IT feels should be relevant to you... which of course is never the case.

What is most annoying is when you have constrained a search to a deep subcategory and the search returns zero items... at which point ebay ever so nonhelpfully proclaims that since your search was unsuccessful, they changed the search to use the same keywords across all of ebay... which destroys the subcategory constraints you originally put in place. If you're not paying attention and are doing several searches for different catalog numbers, you can all of a sudden find yourself searching all of ebay and getting bombarded with irrelevant false results.

ebay needs a "Get the [CENSORED] out of my way!" button.

It has been clear for some time that they worship Amazon.

Don,

While your observations are correct, I believe that you missed the original point.

I believe that the inconsistent behavior and sloppy implementation of changes to the left panel is a bug or design error, not a feature. Careful examination of subcategory behavior reveals that the control or widget to expand the subcategory list may appear or not appear depending on the path taken to reach the current window. Inconsistent behavior or side effects resulting from variations in page display order are hallmarks of a bug or design flaw, not some deliberate policy.

While I agree that ebay may be attempting to change from listings to "products" using some form of "structured data", efforts to date have been mostly ineffective. When I looked at using Big Commerce as a foundation for a web site, it soon became apparent that being charged by the number of products on the web site would be expensive and frustrating because each stamp would have to be treated as a separate product to capture differences in centering and condition. Older stamps, unlike commodity consumer goods, are not fungible. Attempts by ebay to create "structured data" in the stamps category is bound to fail unless some standard, like the Scott Catalog is adhered to. Attempting to crowd source items specifics has led to illiterate entries like "mint no glue" and other distortions of stamp terminology. Also, when ebay invents new item specifics or adds or changes terminology in the dropdown lists, Stamps Category sellers are not notified of given a reasonable path to entering or transferring catalog data to listings.

While it is regrettable that ebay believes that more search results are better, implementation should not impede access to desired search results. Lookers who cannot quickly narrow their options will not buy.

It is not clear that ebay has chosen the most effective way to long term sustainable growth. Spinning off the collectibles part of ebay to a separate company could create a formidable competitor to HipStamp, Delcampe and other wannabe sites that come and go, but could also expose the weakness of the overall ebay marketing strategy. Potential buyers don't seem to place much trust in ebay sellers or ebay for that matter. Why would anyone make risky major purchases on ebay when other sites offer competitive prices and a much higher level of safety.

When I shop for electronics, I check local stores, search major retail web sites and check Amazon, but I don't look at ebay.

In the 1st 2 months of this financial year we sold enough stamps on ebay plus with our own contacts to buy 2 not to old, low mileage Holden Barina's. They are small 5 door hatch backs. One for the mainland and one for the island.

Now the impossible has happened, even more so, we have sold even more stamps on ebay by its self and this has paid for an advanced course to increase my qualification in social behavior and I can drive to where this course is at because of the car we purchased that lives on the mainland.

Like grass that bends with the wind so we have to bend with our retail ebay businesses to keep it into the profitable grove so to speak.

Without my history with ebay none of these purchases could of happened. Simple as that. All stamp sales mentioned originated on and from ebay.

Happy Days.