eBay Search Tips

ebay tips

1. Be specific

If you're searching for the third album released by Beatles, you'll get better results by searching for Beatles "Hard Day's Night" than you will by searching for Beatles. You’ll get fewer results, but they will be far more relevant to your query.

For specific searches, try enclosing words in quotes.

Put a minus (-) sign and then in brackets any words that you don’t want to appear in your search results. For example: "Snakes on a Plane" -(poster, photo) will find items related to the movie Snakes on a plane but not posters or photos.

2. Search titles and descriptions

Always click on "search titles and descriptions" under the search box to also search item descriptions. You'll get more results. You can also add or remove plurals for more results.
 

3. Use the categories

Whatever you're searching for, you’ll notice on the left hand side of the page a list of categories. If you're only searching for a DVD, then just look up results in the DVD category. This way you will narrow your results to DVDs only and you won't have to waste time looking through a load of results that aren't specific to what you're looking for.

5. Misspellings

Many of the eBay sellers often can't spell or just don't check their listing once submitted to eBay. Whatever you're looking for, think of a few misspellings for that item and look it up on eBay. For instance, if you're looking for a Arnold Schwarzenegger DVD, try misspelling his name. Chances are fewer people will find these items and you could get them cheaper.

6. Synonyms

Think of all the possible words you could use to describe an item. You might be looking for a TV but try "television" as well. If you want to search for more words at once, just put them in brackets: (TV,television)

7. Wildcard searches

You can put an asterisk (*) into a search phrase when you want eBay search engine to understand "anything can go here". For example, if you wanted to search for a 1970s necklace, you could search for "197* necklace". 197* will show results from any year in the 1970s.