eBay Pulse and eBay Search

Many people are unaware of a page on eBay that tracks which auctions have the most watchers and also tracks the most popular search terms. The page is the eBay Pulse. It is interesting to view the most popular search terms for the Books category on eBay. "Nancy Drew" is consistently one of the top 10 most searched terms in the entire Books category. Here are the current top 10 searches for the Books category in eBay Pulse, listed in order:

1. easton press
2. stephen king
3. harry potter
4. nancy drew
5. bible
6. james patterson
7. nora roberts
8. signed
9. chess
10. star wars

Checking within the Books category, here are the top 10 search terms for the Antiquarian and Collectibles Books category in eBay Pulse:

1. easton press
2. bible
3. civil war
4. stephen king
5. signed
6. cookbook
7. harry potter
8. nancy drew
9. german
10. books

Here are the top 10 searches for the Children's Books category in eBay Pulse:

1. childrens books
2. nancy drew
3. lot
4. harry potter
5. american girl
6. dr seuss
7. magic tree house
8. little golden books
9. disney
10. bible

What I noticed is that in all three lists, Nancy Drew and Harry Potter seem to have about the same amount of interest.

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Buyers often find it difficult to find certain types of items because the listings are flooded by certain sellers. This just happened in the last few weeks in the Books category. EBay has a partnership with Buy.com in which Buy.com now lists hundreds of thousands of books on eBay. It has rendered many searches useless.

As an example, searching for the Outdoor Girls series has become problematic because several of the public domain texts were recently reprinted. Buy.com has flooded eBay with these listings. Doing a search for the Outdoor Girls series under title and description yields 47 results. 37 of the 47 results are brand-new reprints offered by Buy.com. It makes it harder to spot the older books when a buyer has to wade through multiple copies of new reprints.

There is a remedy for this situation. In order to combat this problem, it is necessary to use the saved searches feature from within My eBay. The buyer must first enter a search from eBay's Search page. If the buyer does not already use the Advanced Search, it will be necessary to click on "Advanced Search" right underneath the search selections. From the Advanced Search page, enter the desired search term. Scroll down to where it states "From Sellers." Click on "From specific sellers (enter sellers' user IDs)" and select "exclude" in the drop down box. Now enter both "buy" and "primemediaking" inside that search box, separated by commas. These two ids belong to Buy.com. Click on "Search" and then click on "Save this search." The search will be saved and Buy.com's listings will no longer show when the buyer clicks on that search from the Saved Searches page.

I am gradually going through my saved searches and revising them to exclude Buy.com. Since I am not planning to purchase the reprints, I would rather not have them cluttering up my searches. Besides, even if I were planning to purchase the reprints, I would just buy them from Amazon.com.