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A funny thing about eBay searches...

 Post subject: A funny thing about eBay searches...
PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:20 pm 
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I've noticed the wierdest thing about searching for Epic stuff on eBay.

If I type in "Epic" in the search bar on the main page, I get (today):

Toys & Hobbies (553)

So, 553 hits for the word "Epic" in Toys & Hobbies.  No problem.  If we click on that to get a better breakdown, we get this:

Toys & Hobbies
?  Games (180)
?  Action Figures (127)
?  Radio Control (31)
?  Trading Card Games (17)
?  Diecast, Toy Vehicles (3)


Now, I'm not good at math, but Mr. Calculator adds those subcategories up to 358.  That's a drop of 195 auctions!

When I click on the "Games" link, we get this breakdown:

Games
?  Miniatures, War Games (118)
?  Role Playing (51)
?  Board, Traditional Games (3)
?  Other Games (1)


Note that this only adds up to 173.  We've lost another 7 auctions somewhere.  Anyway, clicking on "Miniatures, War Games" (to get away from the Micromachines, Epic Duels, and D&D stuff), we get:

Miniatures, War Games
?  Warhammer (255)
?  Other Miniatures, War Games (28)
?  Warmachine (3)
?  Lord of the Rings (1)


Wha...?  Where did all these extra auctions come from?  173 to 287 is a bit of a jump.  Shouldn't they have been reflected in the higher-level category of "Games"?

Clicking on "Warhammer" results in:

Warhammer
?  Other (50)
?  40K (41)


By the Emperor's abacus!  We've lost 196 auctions!  Where have they gone??

If I knew I could click on just one particular level of category and see all the auctions, I'd be fine with that, but eBay's system seems to drop auctions in and out of the search results at random.  Crikey.  Anyone else noticed this problem?

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 Post subject: A funny thing about eBay searches...
PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:54 pm 
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It depends on what level of the tree the auctioneer has selected.

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 Post subject: A funny thing about eBay searches...
PostPosted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:09 pm 
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Not all mini auctions containing the word epic are for E:A. Additionally if you search international, a few ebay sites have their epic stuff in other categories...

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 Post subject: A funny thing about eBay searches...
PostPosted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:32 pm 
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TRC is basically right, but let me elaborate a little to be sure it's well understood. eBay sorts it's auctions by classes, with sub-classes to those classes. So for instance if you're selling miniatures you might just choose to list them under Toys & Hobbies. Then some might put them in under Games. And so on up the line. Meaning at each rung of the list you're losing a little bit of the list, because it only lists the auctions in that particular sub-catagory of the current catagory, not those auctions going on in THIS catagory as well. So for instance the 196 'lost' auctions at the Warhammer level are actually there, they're just listed as part of the 196 auctions which are not part of the two sub-groups (Other and 40K) and are instead just listed under Warhammer.


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 Post subject: A funny thing about eBay searches...
PostPosted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 4:05 pm 
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This post reminds me of Andy Rooney.

And another thing...


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 Post subject: A funny thing about eBay searches...
PostPosted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 6:39 pm 
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Yeah, I understand the class/subclass relationship.  But why are there more auctions in the "Miniatures, War Games" subclass than in the "Games" parent class?  Shouldn't those auctions show up in their parent class, as well?

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 Post subject: A funny thing about eBay searches...
PostPosted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 8:25 pm 
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Part of the issue here is that I am not sure the relationships are as clean as just Class/Subclass.

Having played in eBay for quite some time, I believe some times the "Subclass" will draw from a wider pool then the "Class" .

Also another thing to be careful of, when you drill down some areas default to Title only and some to Title and discription. This will have an impact on the counts you get as well.

dafrca

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