How To Get Hyper Specific on eBay & Save Time

Mini guide to using Boolean search operators on eBay to find vintage fashion & accessories

💌 Today’s newsletter is going to be a bit brief, as I’m slightly behind on my writing schedule, but I didn’t want to leave you hanging. Enjoy this mini guide on using boolean search operators to narrow down your eBay search and save time.

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Finding exactly what you’re looking for on eBay is not an easy or straightforward process. It takes determination; a certain willingness to not give up, ample time, and a curious mind that notices patterns, naming conventions, and filtering processes. Since sellers can practically name their listing anything they see fit, mislabelling and vagueness by novice listers happens quiet often, and your input search term might not pick up on the item you’ve been patiently looking for.

When I discovered the fact that eBay works with Boolean search, it was somewhat revelatory for me. Because Boolean search uses a string (more on this later), no longer did I have to have tabs open for each search term when looking for items because I could combine all possible terms into one single search string to narrow down or broaden out.

What is Boolean search?

In order to avoid getting overly technical and explain it in the way I’ve also plainly understood it, Boolean search allows you to combine keywords of your choice through the use of operators like AND, OR, and NOT. Maybe you’ve already done something like this before on Google by putting your search term in quotation marks in order to pull up results exactly as you have spelled them. It’s basically using characters, operators, in order to manipulate the search results.

For example, if I look up puff sleeve blouse¹ on eBay with the intention of finding a vintage woman’s blouse, I’ll get hundreds of thousands of results that combine new, secondhand, and vintage results. Of course, you could narrow this down further by using filters like category, item location, size, color, etc. (which I still recommend!) but it can be quite tiresome and frustrating to sift through all of these listings. Plus, sellers could be naming it puffy sleeve or puffed sleeve instead of puff sleeve. Furthermore, if I wanted to add the keyword vintage, a seller could have abbreviated it to vtg. On our search, we don’t want to leave any stone unturned.

In order to save time and decrease the amount of tabs you have open, Boolean search is perfect for this. By using the AND, OR, or NOT operators, you can combine all of these keywords into one single search. Boolean is also useful if you’re wanting to broaden your results when working with keywords that may be a little too limited, by allowing you include several brand names into one single search.

So, how does it work?

If you have multiple terms within the same family, I suggest grouping them in parenthesis to be organized and also separated by a comma, which signals the OR operator. Any keyword we don’t want to be included in the results page gets a minus sign (-) put in front of it in order for the keyword to NOT be picked up. The space in between the multiple parentheses will be interpreted as the AND operator. You can also put the keyword in quotation marks in order to pull up results for terms that are named exactly as you’ve typed them out.

Yes, it’s complicated, I know. I still have to say my Boolean search term out loud as I type it in order to get it right.

Let’s try one!

As explained in my newsletter outlining my most used saved searches on eBay, gold modernist earrings is one of my favorite searches. Over time, I discovered that the brands Monet and Napier yield the best results when looking for good quality costume jewelry pieces in nice condition. Instead of pulling up two different searches with each of the brand names, I can combine them to sift through a results page all at once. Just for the purpose of this example, let’s also say I’m not interested in necklaces or pieces with colored enamel on them.

If I typed in gold modernist monet napier with no Boolean operators, I get a results page with only 15 listings because eBay is looking for listings with all of those keywords in the title or item description.

In this case, I want more than just 15 listings. In order to combine keywords, my Boolean search would look like this:

(gold) (modernist) (monet, napier) -necklace -enamel

This Boolean string is telling eBay to look for: gold AND modernist AND (Monet OR Napier), NOT necklace, NOT enamel

Now I have a page with 794 results including earrings, bracelets, and brooches with both Monet and Napier to choose from!

Of course, the results will never be precisely perfect, but it definitely helps. One of the best things about this is that once you get a good Boolean search going, you can save the search just like any other to keep tabs on it.

Final notes 📝

I hope this helps, though admittedly it is slightly complicated. I don’t recommend using Boolean search for everything on the platform, as it can sometimes go a bit haywire if you have too many terms added on. But, it’s definitely useful for discovering listings you didn’t even know were there. Keep trying and testing out different conventions to see what works best for you, too. Also, this technique works a lot better on the desktop site. Lastly, I recommend a nice coffee and snack by your side to keep you going :)

Happy searching! See you next week with another letter.

1. Not putting the search terms in quotes here so that you don’t get mixed up with the ““ operator :)