HACKING EBAY SEARCH: Getting More Out of Your Searches

Don't want to spend 5 hours browsing through 35,000 items in a category?  Tired of finding too many results in your search?  Want to search for 2 different things at once? Here's a few tips that will help you narrow down or expand your searches.  I use *asterisks* between words you should type into the eBay search box.  Don't actually type in the asterisks.

1. Multiple searches at once.  Using parenthesis enables to you search for different items.  For instance, you can do a search for *(cats, shoes)* and eBay will give search all of eBay for cats as well as all items for shoes.  Why would you want to do this?  Well there are some instances where you may want to search for variations like commonly misspelled words. The words separated with commas in the parenthesis tell eBay to search "or."  You can search for many words at once as long as you separate the search keywords in parenthesis with commas.  Try *(import, imports, imported)* or *(box, boxed)*.

2.  How to omit items from a search.  Let's say you want to search for a copy of Final Fantasy Advent Children on DVD.  So you go to the DVDs & Movies category and you type in *Final Fantasy*  as you begin searching through the results you see a lot of things you don't want like Highlander 3, Godzilla, and Final Fantasy the Spirits Within.  Here's how to remove them from your search:  Choose the keywords you don't want to show up in your search such as Highlander or Spirits.  Now change your search from *Final Fantasy* to *Final Fantasy -(highlander, godzilla, spirits)*. Note: Godzilla and Highlander 3 showed up in my search because both were placed in the Fantasy category and have the word "final" in their title.  Love that eBay search!  Want another?  Try searching for *Super Adventure Island*  You will need to add *-mario* to your search as the adventure game Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island comes up in the keyword searches.

3. Searching for exact words/phrases.  With the *Final Fantasy* search in mind, try searching for *Fantasy Final*.  You should end up with the exact same number of searches.  This can be frustrating in certain searches when you find hundreds of items you aren't interested in.  Try using quotation marks around your search keywords, *"Final Fantasy"* and then do a new search for  *"Fantasy Final"*.  Do you see the difference? Try searching for Super Adventure Island in the Video Games category again.  This type search *"Super Adventure Island"*, you won't need to add -mario this time.

I hope this helps your search efforts on eBay!