No you're not alone. I was just complaining to a friend about it- takes me longer to get to my favorite sellers and it seems very glitchy when I'm there. I hate the changed up completed listings, though it is good for the colorblind. The "free" shipping is smaller print now which is annoying for me because I like it saying that in big print. The search seemed annoying for all of about 10 seconds...
The automatic "search titles and descriptions" and omitting some words could actually be beneficial. In fact, unless I did and already forgot, I meant to ask if there's a surefire way to exploit it I haven't considered. You can spam the description in 2 unnoticable ways to show up in more searches.
1. Write LONG sales copy, I mean really long. This method can help your listings anyway for some products, but you can use quite a variety of keywords this way without doing anything "sneaky." For instance, if there are 10 different words that mean the same thing basically, use all 10 but make it sound natural.
2. White text on White background (or any color) is against ebay's rules (as it should be). But, can any of their computer filters catch it if it's not identical but close enough a human can't see? A master list of keywords NOT in eBay titles would be incredibly beneficial here, as some are still typed in trying to find auctions. This is where you would have to for sure protect your listings from being copied/pasted because the highlighting would give up the keywords.
I will give an example. Vladimir Patalakha is an obscure painter. Yes, I actually typed in Google "obscure painter" to find a good example you thieves won't steal from me :D j/k about the stealing, but i did search Google for an example lol
When we type in eBay Patalakha oil painting, ebay is nice enough to say that was a terrible idea of a search and instead gives us a search for just oil painting, all 28,290 results. Had Patalakha been in the description, eBay may have instead given us results with that in the description. My guess is not many people would do that, so the result would be just you... Do this enough and you have extra traffic, hopefully related to what you're selling. Sure, maybe Patalakha is typed in all of once a year who knows, but enough keywords should help. I haven't 100% figured out the formula for why they choose among omitting words, replacing words, or going with the description, but i'm sure Aspkin or Modee have a better idea.
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Am I the only one who loathes eBay's new "my ebay" and search functions? 
