 Google Finds Missing eBay Items
Google Product Search will find items on eBay that eBay's own search engine can't retrieve. A search for Oceanus Magazine on eBay this morning showed zero results. The same search on Google Product Search (go to Google and click on the Shopping tab) brought back results from eBay of Oceanus Magazine. One was for an active Store listing, the other for a listing that had ended.
Another anomaly: eBay said there were no items matching my search for "Oceanus Magazine" - it conducted the search using quotation marks despite the fact I had entered no quotes in my search. Even stranger: when David tried searching on his computer, eBay auto-corrected the search and tried searching for Oceans Magazine (notice that is a different magazine altogether). eBay's search engine is apparently not consistent.
The Active eBay Store Listing
The eBay Store item that Google brought back clicked through to eBay to Item #330339602160 with the title "Oceanus volume 29, number 1, spring 1986". Searching for that entire title on eBay brought back the eBay Store listing - but how would an eBay shopper know the title of a listing ahead of time? A search for just Oceanus did not bring back the magazine listing, because there were so many non-magazine listings that include the term Oceanus (a brand name).
The Completed eBay Listing
The other item brought back in Google Product Search clicked through to Item #120447499534 "1979 Oceanus Magazine Marine Science Ocean / Continent" which had ended on eBay on July 17, 2009. So I went to eBay and did an Advanced Search for Oceanus Magazine, checking the Completed Items box to find listings that had ended. eBay auto-corrected my search term, changing it to Oceans Magazine, which found some items - but the wrong magazine!
I overrode eBay's auto-correct function by returning to Advanced Search on eBay and putting the search term in quotes, "Oceanus Magazine" - eBay found nothing. So I went back to the item I had found through the Google search and put the exact title into eBay's Advanced Search engine: 1979 Oceanus Magazine Marine Science Ocean / Continent, and eBay found no active or completed items. I put quotes around the search term, and it still could not find it.
The only way I could bring up this ended item on eBay was to enter the Item number into the search engine: 120447499534 and then eBay found the listing. But how would someone searching eBay know the Item number?
Many people complain about eBay's Best Match, so I did some searches in eBay's Advanced Search page and changed the "Sort By" drop down menu from "Best Match" to "Price: Lowest first," and still could not find Oceanus Magazine on eBay.
The lesson appears to be, search Google Product Search (shopping.google.com) when you can't find what you want on eBay. The problem for eBay? Most people aren't going to know that, and if they did, shoppers just might click through to a non-eBay item in Google Product Search results.
Last edited by aspkin; 07-19-2009 at 01:18 PM.
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