Tips And Tricks For Using eBay Search
September 26, 2005
If you know what you’re doing, you can quickly find what you’re looking for on eBay. Here are a few golden rules.
Be specific: If you’re searching for the first edition of the original Harry Potter book, you’ll get further searching for ‘harry potter rowling philosopher’s stone first edition’ than you will searching for ‘harry potter’. You’ll get fewer results, but the ones you do get will be far more relevant.
Spell wrongly: It’s a sad fact that many of the sellers on eBay just can’t spell. Whatever you’re looking for, try thinking of a few common misspellings – the chances are that fewer people will find these items, and so they will be cheaper.
Get a thesaurus: You should try to search for all the different words that someone might use to describe your item, for example searching for both ‘TV’ and ‘television’, or for ‘phone’, ‘mobile’ and ‘cellphone’. Where you can, though, leave off the type of item altogether and search by things like brand and model.
Use the categories: Whenever you search, you’ll notice a list of categories at the side of your search results. If you just searched for the name of a CD because you want to buy that CD, you should click the ‘CDs’ category to just look at results in that category. Why bother looking through a load of results that you don’t care about?
Don’t be afraid to browse: Once you’ve found the category that items you like seem to be in, why not click ‘Browse’ and take a look through the whole category? You might be surprised by what you find.
Few people realise just how powerful eBay’s search engine is – a few symbols here and there and it’ll work wonders for you.
Wildcard searches: You can put an asterisk (*) into a search phrase when you want to say ‘anything can go here’. For example, if you wanted to search for a 1950s car, you could search for ‘car 195*’. 195* will show results from any year in the 1950s.
In this order: If you put words in quotes (“”) then the only results shown will be ones that have all of the words between the quote marks. For example, searching for “Lord of the Ringsâ€? won’t give you any results that say, for example “Lord Robert Ringsâ€?.
Exclude words: Put a minus, and then put any words in brackets that you don’t want to appear in your search results. For example: “Pulp Fiction� –(poster,photo) will find items related to Pulp Fiction but not posters or photos.
Either/or: If you want to search for lots of words at once, just put them in brackets: the TV example from earlier could become ‘(TV,television)’, which would find items with either word.
So once you’ve found your bargain item, bid for it and won it, what if it all goes wrong? Don’t worry – eBay has a thorough dispute resolution procedure, and we’ll cover it in some depth in the next article, so you’ll be prepared if the worst happens.
Kirsten Hawkins is an Ebay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visit http://www.auctionseller411.com/ for more great tips on how to make the most from Ebay and other online auctions.
Looking for more information?
Here are a few more selections you may enjoy:
Ebay Auction Buyer’s Tips And Tricks: eBay isn’t just an auction and a marketplace: often it can feel quite a lot like a game. Like any. . . (click title link to read more)Introducing The New eBay “Buyer’s Credit� Program: In an effort to compete with more ‘traditional’ shops, eBay has started to offer finance agreements though PayPal for expensive. . . (click title link to read more)
How To Get eBay Coupons: You have to be very lucky to be one of the chosen few who receive an eBay coupon by email.. . . (click title link to read more)
Choosing An SEO Consultant: While the most important thing in creating a webpage is the designer a consultant knowledgeable in SEO is even more. . . (click title link to read more)
The Quick And Easy Formula For Pottery Buying: Did you know that pottery buying is actually an easy process? People spend their weekends digging through all sorts of. . . (click title link to read more)
Doing Your Holiday Shopping On Ebay: Most people do far more shopping in the holiday season than they do for the rest of the year –. . . (click title link to read more)
What? You Don’t Have An Ebay Store?: In fact, you might not even have heard of eBay stores. Read on to find out what you’ve been missing. eBay. . . (click title link to read more)
Ebay Income Possibilities: If you’ve ever read an article about eBay, you will have seen the kinds of incomes people make – it. . . (click title link to read more)