www.auctionsieve.com

JoeBananas

hi Nev

Using 2.5.5.1, searching ebay.co.uk. (Windows XP Home, Java v6 up13 build 1.6.0_13-b03)

This problem started yesterday or Sunday. The search stalls with message box:

eBay is returning error pages I can't interpret, for
Search inspiron
(they may have changed their pages - email me if problem persists.)
Do you want to keep trying?

The point at which this occurs is consistently at 10100 of [around]46550 (22%), and answering Yes just brings same message back after retry.

Would be grateful for any light you may be able to shed on this.

Joe.

nev · Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 12:50 am Post subject:

That's a lot of result pages....

The easiest way for me to diagnose the problem is if you
- run AuctionSieve
- make the problem happen
- then zip up your AuctionSieve data folder and send it to me.
(The pages returned by eBay are stored in a tmp folder within the data folder, so I can see exactly what you're getting.)

The AuctionSieve data folder is stored here:
Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\AuctionSieve
Windows Vista & 7:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\AuctionSieve

JoeBananas · Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 12:40 pm Post subject:

nev- I've pm'ed the requested folder to you.

nev · Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 12:42 pm Post subject:

Yep - sure enough. If you go the web site and put in that search, you can then change the page number on the end of the url. When you change it to 202 you get that error.

Not much I can do about it. Sad

I can maybe put in some code to give the user better feedback in that situation.

JoeBananas · Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 1:28 pm Post subject:

ok thanks for looking into that Nev. Am i right in thinking eBay must have recently introduced this limit?

nev · Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 11:39 pm Post subject:

I'd say so.
I personally don't have any searches that return that many pages.
It's probably worth trying to refine your search a bit - put in some exclude terms or something.

razorrescue · Active contributor Joined: 11 Jun 2011 Posts: 5

nev · Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 11:58 am Post subject:

Yes, that will help.

I recommend doing your search and then one by one clicking on your trash words to see which ones produce the biggest number of hits, then put those as exclude words. Note that you can only have about 10 or so exclude words.

One other strategy is to split your search up into multiple searches. So for example, if you're searching for typos, you can set that up as a seperate search. As long as the searches are all within the same sieve, duplicate results (ie same item id) will be combined together.

legendar · Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 6:08 pm Post subject:

Hi nev!
It seem to be problem escalates now.
Early, this error message i've seen when total amount of search results were a bit more than 10000 units - 10100 for example, but now any of my seives shows me this error message with 1000-1100 ... 2000-2300 search result. I'm confused about this. How do you think what is it?
Also, there you can see screenshot:

nev · Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 11:36 pm Post subject:

That looks suspiciously like you've hit a new eBay limit.
eBay no longer return more than 200 pages of results.
But by my calculations, you're only on page 20 or 40.
I'll have a look.

nev · Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2011 12:58 pm Post subject:

Ok, I've just tried running it myself and it worked fine.
I searched for "kodak dcs" with "search title and description" turned on.
It retrieved 58 pages, 2855 results.
Maybe a temporary glitch?

Also, related to this thread, I can see 150 of the results are showing no price or bids and time as unknown. I'll take a look at this...

wickmesh · Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2011 8:29 pm Post subject:

I find a similar problem on one search of one of my sieves - but it seems to be on the first page, and when no results are found for that search...?

I keep hitting yes to retry and it seems to go away Very Happy

nev · Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 2:29 pm Post subject:

New beta is out.
Should fix some of the problems.

wickmesh · Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 8:46 pm Post subject:

Hi Nev,

The Beta seems to fix some issues (no items with unknown price) but causes others.

Some items that are auctions appear as BIN in the sieve results eg item 130570667398...

Kind Regards
Andrew

EDIT - spoke too soon, still some with blank prices. Eg item 250884887344 (but this is a classified ad).
Still getting many results with unknown time left. As before, the price updates when they're added to the AS Watchlist.

Another example of an item that comes up as BIN but is an auction - 200647968030.

nev · Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 9:28 pm Post subject:

Thanks - I'll look into it.

Also, the new eBay pages don't have times for a lot of BINs!
I gather they're supposed to just be perpertual items - they're there until they sell.