Here's the email eBay just sent me. I think the net effect on searches will be negative. It's too bad Google doesn't just buy eBay. Then the search would vastly improve.
Your saved searches will change on November 5
Dear ****,
You're receiving this email because we noticed that you are using a wildcard (search terms with a *) in one or more of your saved searches in My eBay.
Starting on November 5, we will no longer support wildcard searches. We encourage you to revise your saved searches to whole words without the *.
Why are we making this change?
We've made many recent improvements to our search capabilities on eBay that now take into account many spelling variations. This has helped us to offer better search results to our buyers and sellers.
However, after November 5, your wildcard searches will not return the same results you're used to seeing. This means that you may possibly miss out on the new and recently-listed items that you're used to seeing in your saved searches in My eBay and in the emails that we send to you.
Here's how to revise your saved search terms
Replace any * in a wildcard search term with whole words.
EXAMPLE: Replace "Floral silk scar*" with "Floral silk scarf"
You can also include various spellings in a single search term by adding it in parentheses, with each additional term separated by a comma.
EXAMPLE: Replace "Floral silk scar*" with "Floral silk (scarf, scarfs, scarves)"
You can also exclude items from the results for your saved search by adding a "-(items to be excluded)".
EXAMPLE: Replace "Porcelain minifigur* -lot*" with " Porcelain (minifigure, minifigurines) -(lot, lots)"
Please update your saved searches today, so you can stay on top of the things you're most interested in finding on eBay.
Thanks for shopping on eBay!
