My Pet Peeve For The Day On Selling Album Pages

If you are only looking for albums, click on the "Publications & Supplies" catagory listed under the "Stamps" category when you do your search. That will eliminate quite a few of your unwanted listings. You can also type a minus symbol in front of a word that you want to exclude from the search, such as - pages or -supplements. To eliminate more than one word, type it in in parenthesis using a coma between words and no spacing between them like this: -(pages,supplements). You can theoretically eliminate as many words as you wish.

The worst offender has to be the guy who lists everything as 'from a quality old album'. . He's done this for years. Makes me want to do a few listings as 'from a ratty old album' He sure skews searching for a lot of people. I messaged him on this once and never got a reply; I think it's a passive aggressive thing.

I just do not have this problem, and I don't even see why it is a problem. As Ken R says, he lists LOTS of album pages from Scott International albums which will come up from searching "album pages," "album," "Scott International," and so on. Should he not use these terms in his listings? What would he use? I have no idea.

If I search "Scott pages" or "Scott album pages" or even just "album," I get what I'm looking for and often see things I hadn't even considered looking for. To me, that's an advantage, not a problem. It lets me see things I often didn't even know existed.

The idea that you could somehow search for just precisely the one type of thing you want, and get nothing else, just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's a bit like expecting to be able to drive to a store that only sells size 9 black dress shoes and nothing else. Come on, people. stop complaining that the world doesn't precisely mirror every single one of your needs. Sheesh.

I do not know the lister's intentions but I could see where "from a quality old album" is used to imply that it is a better stamp, good storage, etc. Of course the statement adds no value.

No matter what ebay does, folks will figure out how to game the system. It is what humans do. I do not want to defend ebay's search functionality, obviously they will always maintain control over it as a profit center. But using the big search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) as an example, no matter what they do people will figure out how to manipulate the system to their advantage. Because of this, I imagine that a company like ebay decided to not play the costly cat and mouse game that the major search engines do with their search ranking algorithms.

ebay wants people to use the "Item specifics" categories and not reply upon written titles and/or descriptions. But what they really prefer is that sellers use UPC codes. By using UPC codes, the listing is classified quickly and correctly by their search index.

At some point, stamp collectors will understand that ebay wants sellers to sell new retail items; in other words they want to be another Amazon. ebay has made this clear in their Annual Report for at least the last 15 years.
Don

As a seller, I try to use whatever words will guarantee as many pages views as possible, just like any other savvy person selling (or marketing) via the Internet.
The word 'album' is great for drawing views.
As a buyer, I buy mostly albums, but I just trawl through everything. ebay is mostly junk listings anyway (pure junk, or overpriced), and no savvy searching is ever going to sort the wheat from the chaff, even where things are accurately described.

The problem is ebay search. It seems to be designed to return too many search results rather than stay within scope or category. Try listing a United States type Ia Scott 500. A potential buyer who searches for 500 in the "Stamps > United States" category will find anything but. They will see parts of catalog values, seller inventory numbers added to the ends of titles and many other irrelevant numbers containing 500.

What are the worst features of ebay Search?

1. "Out of category" results. Electronic parts or motorcycle parts instead of stamps.

2. Inability to narrow an existing search: While it is possible, with effort, to start search at a top-level category, like stamps, ebay search will look elsewhere if only a few results appear.

3. Inability to stay in category if searching from listing: Suppose a potential buyer is not clear on which category to search and mounts a general search to find a listing. Once found, a second search within the same category is not possible. The ebay default is to "all categories". While it is possible to redirect search to a top-level category, it doesn't seem possible to stay within a category.

4. Many sellers are unclear on the concept of category and list in the wrong category. In some ways this is a benefit to sellers. Because so many stamp listings are miscategorized, listing in two categories is often unnecessary. Or, because good stamps are so hard to find on ebay, determined buyers may find yours if appropriate key words are placed in the title.

5. While ebay touts Item Specifics, they don't seem to help in search. Unfortunately, ebay item specifics available in left panel searches are often at odds with generally accepted philatelic terminology. The denomination search is useless because it doesn't recognize variations like 1¢ for 1 cent or the differences between "one cent" and "1 cent 1" on the front of the stamp. Some sellers are lazy and use 1c or worse 1C for one cent. Scott usage of the word "Mint" in stamps is illiterate. Their non-existent subject matter expert should have read the introduction to the Scott Catalog that defines terminology for gum condition.

6. Some item specifics are, or were, crowd sourced. "Wisdom of the crowd" does not seem to apply to ebay stamp sellers.

What would a good search look like? I think I would know if I see it, but I don't see it on ebay or Amazon or some store web sites. Sites like Amazon may find nothing unless the exact or near-exact terminology is used. Google or Bing may not find transient items on sites like ebay. While Don and others may contradict this, I have not seen a search that gives potential buyers the ability to seamlessly narrow or expand searches based on prior search results or starting from one listing of the type of item desired. While ebay and others attempted to improve search through using cataloging, nothing of this sort has been attempted for stamps, at least not by ebay. Does HipStamp have a more effective search?'

I am afraid that we are stuck with an array of bad choices until someone invents a smarter search instead of trying to dumb down search results to the lowest denominator. For now, search seems to be a component of the "race to the bottom" between ebay and Amazon.

On my computer (Mac) when I choose "stamps publications" on ebay's search menu, I always get coins publications results. It has been like this for years.

In terms of 'bad choices'...I quit using Google years ago, I strongly refuse to support this company given their political, ethical, and business practices. It is absolutely scary in how they handle your personal information and search data. (You might has well tattoo their name on your forehead and walk around giving them free advertising.)

Instead I use DuckDuckGo https://duckduckgo.com/ , at least they give me and my searches a bit of privacy. And they are not close to world domination like Google.
Don

I was thinking exactly the same DrewM - it can be a bit of a challenge to weed out the unwanted items but I often come across things I wasn't expecting or even looking for. The other day I snagged seven stamps for £5.50 including postage that have a CV approaching £200, and regularly sell for way more than what I paid. The listing wasn't something I was searching for, it just randomly popped up. I definitely see the inaccuracy of searches as more of an advantage than a disadvantage.