Searching on eBay is kind of like visiting a foreign country, it’s a lot easier to find that quaint little hotel up in the Alps if you speak the local lingo. With eBay, that means getting hep to some of its search operators. Here’s a quick intro.
Exclude results you don’t want
Put a minus sign (-) in front of a search term to exclude any results that contain the term. For example, the search:
camera -digital
will show you all auctions that contain the word “camera”, but not the word “digital” in the auction title, handy if you’re looking only for film cameras. You can also exclude multiple terms, like so:
camera – digital -Kodak -Sony -Minolta
or include multiple terms and exclude other:
acoustic guitar -electric
Use Wildcards
Use the asterisk (*) wildcard search term before or after a word or letters, and eBay will match all words that begin or end with that term. For example, the search:
*caster guitar
would return auctions of Stratocaster as well as Telecaster guitars. Conversely, searching for:
Tele*
would return auctions of Telecaster guitars, telescopes, telephones, Teletubbies, and so on.
Use OR Searches
Searches on eBay are automatically AND searches, so auctions show up only of they contain every term you put in your search. However, you can use the OR operator to list auctions that contain any of your search terms. This is useful if you’re looking for multiple items, or if your searches aren’t returning enough auctions. To do an OR search, put the terms in parentheses, separated by commas. For example, to find a lute or mandolin, you would use this search:
(lute, mandolin)
Search for Exact Phrases
As with many other search engines, to search for an exact phrase on eBay, surround the phrase with quotation marks, like this:
“squire stratocaster”
You can use other kinds of Boolean searching, too. For detailed information on what operators you can use, how you can combine them, and other tips, go to eBay Help site