Richard, E-bay does have a policy against "Key Word Spamming" and I know they doe enforce it. I was sellling a dirtbike last week and had a few very serious buyers bidding on it, it was over my reserve and I was pretty happy with the price it hit and there was still 4 days to go. Then all of a sudden, without warning BAM it was deleted, not cancelled or suspended or ended ...deleted, gone. I could not even view a copy of the page to get the e-mail addresses of the potential buyers. An email from e-bay explained that they deleted it because of key word spamming. I had included references to similar style bikes from other manufacturers in order to attract potential bidders for that style of bike..... I thought it was OK ebay did not agree. A while back I would run a seach for 1956 Dodge and get a listing of hundreds of soft cover novels, it was impossible to even quickly scan throught the list for car parts. I notified e-bay and a few days lated that stopped happening. Oh well I rambled on enought for one morning. Scott
Dan Morton's observation about the unreliability of eBay's daily notifications for favorite searches is all too true, in my experience. The searches themselves are precise and exact. I get different results when I search "58 Chrysler" and "1958 Chrysler". The daily notification of new listings for "58 Chrysler" is almost entirely "junk" such as fuzzy dice, suicide knobs, curb feelers, tire valve caps, and such. When I do as Dan has done, namely, do a "fresh" search, I get lots of stuff that the daily notification (for that exact search string, by the way) never turned up. I have a hunch that the daily notification of new items is capped at a certain number of items, and if your particular search turns up more than that number, eBay only notifies you of the first 10 or 15 items. Somehow, IMHO, the really clever junk vendors have found a way to include every year and every brand name in their search terms, as well as a way to be among the top 10 or 15 items that the daily notification system reports on. In one of my "favorite searches" for "19xx Brand X" items, I used to get a daily notification of Amos 'n Andy video tapes and some "chartbuster" CDs. Finally, I redid my favorite search as "19xx Brand X -(amos, chartbuster)", to eliminate those two junk items. As with everything in business, the seller wants to maximize his exposure, no matter how annoying it may be to uninterested recipients. At least eBay hasn't started sending out daily telephone messages with each and every junk item described in detail. eBay telemarketing would be all we'd need, to conclude that the apocalypse is upon us! Dick Woodside -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 2003 Calendar voting results and ordering information is online! Please visit: http://www.forwardlook.net/calendar2003 for more information.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 2003 Calendar voting results and ordering information is online! Please visit: http://www.forwardlook.net/calendar2003 for more information. |
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