eBay search fail

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Sat Dec 1 11:34:15 CST 2018


    > On a whim, I tried searching for '"pdp-11" "pdp-11"' (i.e. just
    > repeated the keyword), and this time it _did_ turn it up! Very odd.
    > I wonder why that made a difference? 

So I have a new theory about this. Searching for 'pdp-11' causes eBay to
automagically limit the search to the 'Vintage Computing' category. They
must have a keyword->category database.

Anyway, if I manually then select 'All' categories, I get the same results
for searches for both 'pdp-11' and 'pdp-11 pdp-11'. So my theory is that
'pdp-11 pdp-11' _doesn't_ hit their database, and so it goes to 'All' -
thereby producing different results.

So I just have to hit 'All' every time I do a search...

	Noel


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