eBay search character limit

A while back, eBay changed their search function to limit a search to 100 characters. Because of this, we had to change TypoJoe’s search engine to break down the misspelled keyword list generated into searches that are 100 characters or less.

If you have a long keyword or a keyword phrase, it will take a lot of separate searches to complete the misspellings generated for just one misspellings search.

We have not applied for a higher call limit (at least not at the time of this writing) through eBay, so we have a set number of eBay calls we can use per day. So, we limit the number of hundred character searches per spelling search.

So, for keyword phrases, you may want to try them separately. If your keyword phrase was “Oriental Antique”, you can try a search with a both keywords included, but also try each of them separately, just in case your search got cut off before all of the misspellings generated were searched for (When more than one key word is searched for, misspellings are generated for one word while keeping the correct spelling for the other word in the same search, and once the first word is done, the second word then has its misspellings generated while keeping the first word spelled correctly. Obviously, this adds many characters to the total search).

We are working on a couple other things at the moment, but hope to look into applying for a higher call limit in the very near future. By the time you read this, we may already have applied and received a higher limit, and this may no longer be an issue (searching keyword phrases only one word at a time).

Something else when you’re searching using a keyword phrase rather than just one keyword – don’t bother adding small common words like “the”, “and”, etc. for example, if you’re searching for The Chronicles of Narnia (hopefully I spelled that right), don’t include “the” and “of”, just search for “Chronicles Narnia”. misspellings of those small common words aren’t going to help in a misspelling search, and probably bring back a lot of results that don’t have much of a chance of being useful to you.

We’d like to get some more feedback from you, our user, as to what sort of features you would like to see in the future here on TypoJoe, so if you have any ideas, use the contact page and let us know.

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Unable to get ebay results page

“I have tried several times to access ebay through your page and whatever I type in the search area doesn’t work. Pop-ups have been temporarily allowed but still nothing.The same page remains.
Can you tell me where I am going wrong please.”
Hello

You Wrote:

‘I have … wrong please.’

I’m not clear on what the problem is. You’re not able to perform searches on typojoe?

I just tried a couple and it is working ok for me.

There are directions on the page as to how to do a search, basically just enter in your keyword or keyword phrase in the search ‘Enter search term or phrase here’, choose any or none of the advanced search options, and then click the ‘Search’ button shown in the bottom left part of the search box.

If you’re not having a problem with that, maybe you’re asking why the
results aren’t shown on ebay, but instead on a page that opens in typojoe?
We recently added the tab that shows the results on typojoe, because
misspelling searches take more than one search to perform, now that ebay has limited searches to 100 characters. We can do multiple searches for one misspelling search and combine all the results on the one typojoe results page, you can only do one search at a time when showing the results on ebay itself.

I’m guessing that that might be your issue? You want to see the results on ebay itself?

They results are still shown on ebay itself too, in a different tab in
your browser. Are you using a pda or phone to access typojoe? I’m not sure how that works on one of those, when multiple tabs are supposed to open up after doing a search.

I may have just confused you more, but if you can answer the questions or make it clear as to the problem, maybe I can help you out.

Thanks… typojoe

“I type in Dolce Gabbana in ‘term or phrase’ (on laptop) and click ‘search’.
Then a message comes up to say ‘pop ups blocked’ so I click ‘temporarily allow pop-ups’ and it still stays on the same page with nothing changed. If I search again the same thing happens. All I get is the pop up message and no different page.”

Hello again

That sounds like an issue with your browser settings. As you wrote, you should be able to turn off ‘pop up’ blocking, but if that is not working for you, maybe try a different browser.

If you’re using IE, maybe try Firefox, or vice versa.

If you disabled the pop up blocker on your current browser, it should be
working however. Maybe get into your browser settings and disable it from there, instead of using the temporarily allow pops option.

Hopefully one of those things will get it working for you.

typojoe

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International-ebay-sites-other-languages

“Thank you for this tool, I have actually found more than one good deal using it.

1 thing:
It’s nice that you can search different international eBay sites with your search tool but the instructions are in English only so many people in say France, Spain, Italy, Germany etc. won’t be able to use it because they cannot read the text on how to use it and what it is about in the first place. It’s not an issue for me but probably is for people from other countries. If you add the foreign languages of the countries that eBay is popular in you’ll probably get more international users.”

Thanks for the tip. I will look into adding different language versions of at least the home page here on Typojoe, I think that will be good enough. I don’t think that machines can translate very well for the most part, so I’d probably have to get a person to do it for each language.

Also, I’m really not sure how well the misspelling generator would work for other languages. I guess as long as a person is using the ‘QWERTY’ style keyboard, it should work ok.

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