I have noticed recently that the search function on ebay has changed, i used to be able to put a (*) after a few letters which helped with mis-spelt items but it now comes up that this function is no longer supported. best get the spell checker out!!

Yup. Quite annoying. Another trick is to create strings using brackets. For example, if you want to look for Mary Poppins Autographs, I'd search:

mary poppins (auto,autograph,autographs)

to cover my bases. Apparently it looks for misspellings, but I'd rather be safe to catch them.

The thing is, their search engine cannot pick up misspelt names. The wild card has proved very useful in locating cards by particular artists with slightly unusual names that can be easily misspelt. eBay search just tries to match up real words that might be what you are looking for. So very much a retrograde step by eBay. Not helpful to potential buyers in the slightest. Typing out long strings of possible variations is hardly a quick way to do anything

I have also sent a complaint to their customer service. Hopefully enough complaints will lead to a reversal.

By the way 'auto' does not pick up 'autograph' so it's clear their intelligent text matching is pretty much adding or dropping an 's'. I also agree about the artist name thing, I use that a lot because some names are easily mangled.

I use this

http://www.fatfingers.co.uk/

I thought I was the only guy tearing out my hair. There's a few things you can't do any more if you're a completist, or if you play one on TV.

It started with the wildcard searches disabled only for the completed auctions - and now it's spread to the current auctions. It makes it tougher to do research because there are always variations in how sellers spell! (And some of my best finds were misspelled items that other bidders missed.)

And there are disagreements on spelling and punctuation. Searches on "deadworld" are not going to find "dead world", nor "bench warmer" for "benchwarmer". "You'll Die Laughing" won't find the "Youll Die" listings. At least eBay considers punctuation the same as a space, so you don't worry about optional hyphens.

I previously used a lot of long search strings in brackets to get around the eBay limit of 100 characters - the wildcards let me include only a portion of multiple names or search terms and keep under the limit. If you were looking for something new or unique: you could check for items you didn't know about yet with a complicated search string to exclude things you already knew. For instance a search for additional artists for Star Wars Galactic Files, I could start with " wars galac* sketch -aa* -bb* -cc* -dd* " etc. and exclude the first few letters of the names I already knew.

As a test, I just picked a random Trek actor auto card name, Kusatsu...I typed in Kusat.
It changed Kusat to Kuat and then using Kusat* and it returned nothing at all.
So, if I were really watning his card and worried about misspellings....I'd get nothing.

I got an email from ebay about this, looks like we will need to be a bit more proactive in our searches, does seem a backward move..

Here's how to revise your saved search terms

Replace any * in a wildcard search term with whole words.

EXAMPLE: Replace 'Floral silk scar*' with 'Floral silk scarf'

You can also include various spellings in a single search term by adding it in brackets, with each additional term separated by a comma.

EXAMPLE: Replace 'Floral silk scar*' with 'Floral silk (scarf, scarfs, scarves)'

You can also exclude items from the results for your saved search by adding a '-(items to be excluded)'.

EXAMPLE: Replace 'Porcelain minifigur* -lot*' with 'Porcelain (minifigure, minifigurines) -(lot, lots)'

quote:

Originally posted by drofdarb:
I got an email from ebay about this, looks like we will need to be a bit more proactive in our searches, does seem a backward move..

Here's how to revise your saved search terms

Replace any * in a wildcard search term with whole words.

EXAMPLE: Replace 'Floral silk scar*' with 'Floral silk scarf'

You can also include various spellings in a single search term by adding it in brackets, with each additional term separated by a comma.

EXAMPLE: Replace 'Floral silk scar*' with 'Floral silk (scarf, scarfs, scarves)'

You can also exclude items from the results for your saved search by adding a '-(items to be excluded)'.

EXAMPLE: Replace 'Porcelain minifigur* -lot*' with 'Porcelain (minifigure, minifigurines) -(lot, lots)'

I got that email as well because I had saved searches with wildcards in them.
They've had bad ideas before but this one has to be the dumbest. Essentially, their sellers will be losing sales because the buyers won't find the items they want.

Good to see i'm not the only one affected by this. I don't like this change either.

it doesn't even make things plural. I am modifying some of my automatic searches and testing as I go. I had to do (batcoin, batcoins) because their 'intelligent' expansion could not work out to add an 's' since it's not a real word.

I've just been on to eBay Customer Services over a different matter but took the opportunity to raise this problem with the removal of wild cards from the search system. The poor gentleman I spoke to asked that I submit a formal written complaint to the people dealing with this sort of thing. The email address he gave me was:

powersellerteam@ebay.com

He thinks that if enough people lodge complaints, then something might be done about it. I'll be composing my message shortly and including references to the way it is driving away buyers who can no longer find what they are looking for. Maybe a few people on here could join in too. Just a thought

Try to look closely your search. I noted sometimes that the search bar changes your words for even not related words.

I've noticed items coming up regardless of being plural. I collect busts, and if there's not one available for a particular ifem, it automatically searches out "best". Mispellings and leaving out key words by sellers have helped me get good deals. I miss the "any location" advanced search option.

quote:

Originally posted by Kevin F:
I've just been on to eBay Customer Services over a different matter but took the opportunity to raise this problem with the removal of wild cards from the search system. The poor gentleman I spoke to asked that I submit a formal written complaint to the people dealing with this sort of thing. The email address he gave me was:

powersellerteam@ebay.com

He thinks that if enough people lodge complaints, then something might be done about it. I'll be composing my message shortly and including references to the way it is driving away buyers who can no longer find what they are looking for. Maybe a few people on here could join in too. Just a thought

email sent thanks