eBay Finally Upgrades Its Search Technology

In this message to the eBay (EBAY) community, Jeff King, Ebay's Sr. Director of Finding, announces that eBay has upgraded its search technology (they call it 'finding technology') and will roll it out to 1% of new buyers over the next six weeks as a test. Here is the description:

As a simple example, if a buyer in the test searches for "red size 12 shoes," instead of looking just for listings with the words "red," "size," "12," and "shoes," the search engine will find all of the items in the shoe category that are size 12 in the color red. In the end, the buyer should see more relevant items. Plus they'll see a new way to narrow their listings results according to important details such as size, color, type, etc.

This is a BIG deal for eBay. They are finally improving their core search experience. eBay created a new search technology a few years ago codenamed Magellan and they used it as the search engine for eBay Express. While Magellan helps to find exactly what you search for, the eBay Auctions search technology embraces the concept of ‘finding new things’ and will often return complimentary items.

For example when I search for the “iPod Nano” on eBay Express I receive hundreds of listings for Nanos but when I search for “iPod Nano” on eBay Auctions I receive “NIB Wireless Stereo Headphones Ipod Nano Generation 1” as the second listing. eBay Auctions search returns a lower quality result, which hurts their conversion rates.

It finally sounds like the auctions team is making much needed improvements. If all goes well, these improvements will continue to propel eBay’s recent surge in revenue per listing.

Now if they could only stop calling it finding and start calling it search.