P3D Re: ebay 3-D search

[michaelk@xxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Kersenbrock)]

> OK, I have to give up:
> Ebay's new search engine regards a dash (-) as "not"... so I can no longer
> search for items containing "3-D".
> They have not been able to help nor seem to care (can't look for hi-8,
> s-vhs, etc).

There probably is little they themselves can do, they "OEM" the search
engine SW, and tried a few which worked on test machines but failed miserably
when tried on their "production" server with its heavy load.  This one
seemed to have worked even if the query language was a bit more esoteric
(but fine once gotten used to).  At the moment I think they're glad it works
at all rather than being upset about it's  quirks.  Best they can do is
to pass the requests on to the search-software vendor.  Hopefully they
did that with your query.  Maybe if you say that "skippy" and you are
old friends?


> Anyone have a workaround?

I've fussed with it over time, but pretty much gave up.  If you do 
"K6-333" it works, and doesn't get all the K6's nor all the 333's, but
only the dash'ed combo's.  But it doesn't seem to work for 3-D ('3' and 'D' must
get an excessively large number of hits and something breaks).

Anyway, I suspect that any sellers with a bit of experience with ebay
won't use "3-d" or if they do, to use "3D" as well.  Part of making
one's title (if not the primary thing) is to place key words for searches.
Seller has control of what the title is and it's in there interest to
have it searchable by all those who may be interested.

Mike K.


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