If you know what you?re doing, you can quickly find what you?re
looking for on eBay ? and the more you know about how buyers
find you, the easier you?ll find it to be found. Here are a few
golden searching 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 incorrectly: 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 ? you might find a few items here
that have slipped through the cracks.?
Get a thesaurus: You should try to search for all the different
words that someone might use to describe an 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, you should click the ?CDs?
category to look at results in that category only. 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 realize 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 Rings?
won?t give you any results that say, for example ?Lord Robert
Rings?.?
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.?
I hope this little primer helps you with your eBay searches.
Whether you're searching for an item you want to purchase or
you're researching products and competitors, these little tips
should help. Don?t get too tied up learning the ways of the
search engine, though: a surprising number of eBay users don?t
search at all, preferring to look through eBay?s category system
and save their favourites in their browser.
About the author:
Robbin K. Tungett is online marketing and eBay veteran of 8
years. She is most widely known for her eBay expertise and her
website http://www.AuctionRiches.com. Please visit her blog at
http://www.AuctionHerald.com.
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