I haven't really noticed anything , but then I never use the Categories side bar anyway. I've always found it to be pretty useless .

Well, when you search for something and get 5 to 10-fold more listings found than in the past it's because you now get all scales lumped together into the same pot now. I have to go through several steps to filter and subtract out HO, N, S, etc. out of my searches now. While that's doable, and you can get pretty specific, it's got to be compromising sales since it's a lot more work to set up and do those searches.

What is it about these internet companies that they continually take stuff that works and make gratuitous changes, that mostly demonstrate they have NO BLEEPING CLUE how their customers actually use the product???

(I blame 'agile methodology', which emphasizes coding before thinking and changes without any understanding of consequences of same. Doing software -right- is hard, most companies can't be bothered...)

dave

Nailed it, Dave!!!!

they continually take stuff that works and make gratuitous changes

Right Dave.
Add to that, the very common drive by company decision-makers to get promoted, which is the reward for "coming up with something new"!

I never really relied on the categories. Create your own category by simply typing in what you are looking for, say "O scale windows", and hit enter.
This will search the TITLES only. If you want those words to search the descriptions as well, select FILTER and scroll down and select "search in description" as well.
Now if you like the results you are seeing, simply click on "Save this search".
I would much rather rely on what the seller put in the TITLE or DESCRIPTION rather than what Category they chose, which may not be what I would have picked anyway.
Most people I believe search by TITLE or TITLE and Description, so all is not lost . . . .
Hope this help.

Actually, my searches were set up by Title and Description..........but within the category of O Scale so as to eliminate everything else.

Now the issue w/o the categories is that my O scale searches that were returning 5-20 items are now returning 200 or more items.....inclusive of all scales.

Yes, I can set up new searches that include "O scale" in the search; however, if the seller does not put the scale in either Title and/or Description, those listings are not going to be included in the search results.

So, sellers are going to have to be diligent to specify scale and other details in the Title and Description to make searches work for buyers

I discovered this change last night and I'm not happy with the change at all.

I can't tell you how many unique items I've found because the seller didn't know what they had or listed it incorrectly. Just picked up three packs of vintage Gandy Dancers HO figures for less than half the price one pack typically goes for. The seller had them listed in the HO category, but not described in a way that typically gets views and would lead to a bidding war.

Of course this tactic relies on patience and the ability to search accurately within categories. Cast too broad a net and I'll waste time sifting through unrelated listings. Too narrow and I'll likely miss something. It is akin to wandering the train show tables and looking in those wonderful cardboard trays down under the table where the real 'fleas' are. The guy that knows what he's selling is likely to have it at market prices or higher, based on what he thinks he can get. But the seller who is just trying to get rid of 'junk', will ask you to name your price or make a deal. If that 'junk' includes a mis-labeled piece of vintage rolling stock or pile of FSM castings, or Central Valley trucks, well, you get the idea.

I suspect the sellers who are willing to put in the time and adapt to the changes will still be around because they have a dedicated base of buyers. I just picked up a set of decals from K4 supply company and I've purchased from them before, quite happily. But this may mean an end to Grandma Snerd flogging her son's collection of Campbell kits from his youth that he no longer wants, et al.

Galen

Back when eBay was actually responsive to its users (buyers and sellers), they set up panels that would advise them on how to organize categories. They dropped those advisers and started reorganizing based on their understanding of what worked best for a few high volume sellers. I suspect the same algorithmic approach is at work here.

dave

Oh boy my turn! They rank worst. I'm very careful who I buy from. Some of those vendors are crooks with excessive postage and price of goods.
Just last night I tried to return a reply to a seller and the email does not work...

I think that eBay has pretty much screwed up the whole model railroad search by having to go through additional steps to find what we're looking for. One thing that eBay is always trying to do is to get users exposed to as many listings as possible whether you're interested or not. After all, it's a seller's platform, not a buyer's.

I've been rebuilding some of my stored searches and I'll see if that makes this tolerable or not. I also used to do 1-2 manual searches, but no more of that as it's too much to set up now with this change - recreate those as stored searches.

But this would seem to spell the end of my selling on eBay. I can make the titles and descriptions as informative as possible, but then that's presuming that buyers are working equally hard.....and I'll find out fast enough if I'm wasting my time or not. Could be the end.