Knowing how to search is critical to properly buying and selling items on eBay. Finding the item you are looking for among a mountain of other items can be a real chore. Too specific a search will eliminate many potentially desirable prospects, and too broad a search will overwhelm you with the sheer volume of items you'll encounter.
The common method of searching involves typing in the terms you're looking for and narrowing choices by adding more words that you desire to see in the search. A different approach is "searching in reverse," where you type in broad search terms and then eliminate items by adding words that you don't want to see and that aren't pertinent to the desired result.
Here's how it works. Type in your search and analyze the results. Determine the keywords that are irrelevant, and eliminate any auctions with the words you don't want. You do this by adding a minus sign and put the unwanted terms in parentheses.
For example, let's say you are looking for Ethernet cards. Specifically, you are looking for Tealport Xircom Realport 10/100 PCMCIA Ethernet cards.
You type a specific search string, "Realport PCMCIA Ethernet" and find around 12 items. Isn't that wonderful, so easy to make a decision. At least on the surface it appears so.
But if you type in a broader search string, for example "Xircom PCMCIA" you will find over 350 items. Many of these items are not what you are looking for; you don't want a modem, and you don't want a dongle.
Here is what happens when I used the following search terms.
- Xircom PCMCIA netted 354 results
- Xircom PCMCIA -(modem) netted 257 results
- Xircom PCMCIA -(modem,10base) netted 251 results
- Xircom PCMCIA -(modem,10base,dongle,cable) netted 223 results
On the search results page on the left column, there is a box that says, "in titles & descriptions." When I checked the box and did the search again 180 items came up. The search looks throughout the entire auction description, not just the title. So if an auction doesn't mention modem in the title, this search will pick it up in the description.
If you are a seller doing a market analysis for an item, from the first search you might get the impression that you only have 12 listings competing with you. This could also have an impact when making a purchasing decision. If you are the buyer you may have missed an opportunity to bid on many more items translating into paying a higher price.
The risk with searching in reverse is that you will miss items. For example, if a seller writes, "does not include dongle" in the description, you will miss that item!
Trying a variety of search techniques is the best approach. It pays to experiment with your search strategies. You may find items you never would have known were there!
Finally, consider using a program called DeepAnalysis from Hammertap http://www.hammertap.com. Many of the the eBay Pros use it.
