eBay rolled out a new search feature called Grouped Listings. “By leveraging structured data and machine learning, we’ve organized the listings across all shopping categories on eBay to show you the best product results for your search and for each product it provides you the different ways you can buy this product. This feature is powered by artificial intelligence and will get smarter as it gets feedback on the popularity of certain products and sees how users interact with them.”
Right now it’s an option – shoppers can see a “Group Similar Listings” button in search results. But it wouldn’t surprise us if eventually it became the default search experience.
The Grouped Listing feature launched on Monday (Columbus Day) on desktop to select users, and will be rolling out this week to US, UK, Germany and Australia, and it will be coming soon to mobile.
eBay CEO Devin Wenig said, “for merchants and sellers, they will fully participate as long as they are complying with our structured data requirements.”
Announcement follows:
eBay has an unrivaled selection of more than 1.1 billion listings, but sometimes all that selection can be a lot of work to sort through. When you are looking for microwave ovens on eBay, there are almost 10,000 different listings. And as you scroll through the results, you’ll see listings for the same product again and again, just from different sellers. But wouldn’t it be nice to see the product you’re looking for just once in the search results, grouping together all seller listings so you could easily find the best deal? Plus, if that particular microwave wasn’t what you wanted, you wouldn’t want to see it repeatedly in the results.
That is where our new Grouped Listings view comes in. For many searches, you’ll now see a [Group Similar Listings] button above the search results that enables you to condense like offerings in your search results so it’s easier to find what you really want.
When you group the listings for that microwave oven search, those 10,000 listings condense over 10X into the 953 unique products they represent. We’ve also made the functionality “smart”– the button will not appear in cases where most of the listings you’d see are unique like antique teapots.
We’re using our vast repository of structured data across a wide range of products to group these listings, taking into account everything from unique identifiers like UPC codes and model numbers to product features obtained through artificial intelligence that understands natural language. Our search relevancy algorithms then leverage machine learning to show you the best offer for that product directly in the search results.
Our new Grouped Listings feature is just another step toward evolving our search experience from focusing on individual listings to being structured around products. In the coming months, you’ll continue to see us enhancing the experience and expanding our investments in this area. Grouped listings is currently live on desktop in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Australia, and will be available on mobile soon.
Jon Glick is Vice President of Search Product at eBay, where his focus is on streamlining the search experience so it’s easier for people to find what they are looking for and get the best deals.
SOURCE: eBay Press Release
Leave a comment and let us know what you think!
Its no wonder the search results this morning were all messed up. I was looking for rubber plugs for a hose and guess what I got….Rubbers and not the shoes.
Ebay is so screwed up even they don’t know what is going on. The titanic just took on more water this morning. It won’t be long. BLURP BLURP
Except Ebay does not realize that one blanket search feature doesnt apply to everything and its messing things up. A big chunk of ebay is used collectables.
I just tried this garbage feature and it lumped things together that werent the same. It hides the listing until you click see details. It pretends it finds multiple buying options. Its just random listings grouped together and not what you are looking for.
This is the worst feature Ive seen them add yet. It was way worse than just filtering the listings lowest price first and scrolling. People will search for what they want. When they see too many results theyll use the side tabs to narrow it or add more to the search line.
Ebay has yet to realize sellers/buyers do not want their help to sell their listings. They dont want to be shown what ebay thinks they want. Search should just be matching words only. QUIT CHANGING EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME. It makes the site unstable and sellers have to constantly change everything they do and its very very time consuming. Ebay needs to work on its site maintenance before this disaster.
I consider myself as being “able” to circumnavigate ebay’s ridiculous search features but this one has my baffled. I gave up searching yesterday as the entire system is now so ridiculous it’s not worth wasting your time on. I’ll just concentrate on listing new product and hope that someone might just be able to find me and buy something.
Here’s the stupid thing ebay always misses – sellers are buyers. Remember when you’d just pile up that money in your paypal account so you could spend it on ebay? Ha! now I suck my money out daily if there is any and just keep it in my pocket. One ridiculously stupid CEO after another and they just get worse.
This sounds like the eBay version of the Buy Box that they previewed at the Open event.
They say that they don’t want to be compared to Amazon and that they are different, but they are the ones that are driving the comparisons by “innovations” such as this.
Now they want buyers to buy off the summary page (ie. on price) rather than read the sellers’ listings. So the race to the bottom has turned the final corner into the home straight.
Would the last person to leave please switch off the lights. Thanks.
Why would they possibly do something this stupid during the fourth quarter.? Search is a disaster and so is this company.
It just doesn’t work.
I search a simple term and get conflicting items.
It’s a mess,
It’s killed sales, I can’t understand it or use it to find items so I have no idea how a buyer would navigate it.
It doesn’t make sense.