www.auctionsieve.com

durianfish · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 12:08 am Post subject: REFINING MY SEARCHES

i've been using AS successfully for some time, but am looking to reduce the amount of time i trawl through ebay listings.

my current searches are for certain keywords on all ebay sites, with a trash word filter; the "already seen" filter and a "price greater than $50" filter enabled.

this works well, but if an auction rises above $50, will it appear in a subsequent search. for example, i run my sieve on tuesday and the seller lists their item @ 99¢, so i miss it. it's a valuable item so it quickly goes to $200 - will it appear in the same search on thursday (or whenever), or will my search miss it?

if i switch off the "already seen" filter, i get all the listings i don't want to see, not just those that were below $50 and now ain't. any thoughts?

nev · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 3:50 am Post subject:

Perhaps a better name for the "already seen" filter would be "already retrieved". Ie yes, the auctions that have now gone above $50 will still not be visible because you retrieved them already on tuesday.

There's a simple way to solve this problem.
Click on the Options button to drop down the options panel and enter a "Min price" of 50. That way, ebay won't return anything below $50 and thus, those items won't have been "already seen".

Think of the Options panel as a pre-filter - ie the filter that ebay applies before returning results.
Then the other "Filters", such as trash words, act as post-filters - after the results have been retrieved.

durianfish · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 5:28 am Post subject: TA

sounds perfect, i hadn't considered it that way. i can't seem to find the area where a minimum price can be selected in the options area (in the tools pulldown menu) - i can see: appearance; sieve actions; watchlist; browser; proxy and updates.

nev · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 7:10 am Post subject:

I mean the Options button inbetween the "Search term" entry box and the "Get auctions!" button.
Click on that and a panel should reveal itself with all the search options.
It's also got a draggable divider if you can't see all the options.

Found it?

durianfish · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 7:26 am Post subject: ta

thanks again nev, i can see all of the search options for single search sieves, not for the sieves that search across multiple categories (ie ebay us, aus, canada etc at the same time).

nev · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 11:09 am Post subject:

There's a button at the bottom of the options panel which says "Add extra searches" or "Edit extra searches". Try that.
If you can't see that button, grab the divider and make that panel bigger.

durianfish · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 11:59 am Post subject:

i can edit single site sieves to add a minimum price (and also to search multiple sites) from the options pulldown menu once i'm into them, but not those that i've set up to search multiple sites.

nev · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 12:59 pm Post subject:

Can you see the "Edit extra searches" button below the Min Price field?

Alternatively go to File->Properties for (sieve name)->Show Advanced Search options... and you'll see the extra searches - you can specify min prices for those as well.

Or am I misunderstanding? What do you mean by the sieves that search multiple sites if you don't do it via the "extra searches" button?

durianfish · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 11:30 pm Post subject:

most of the searches i am running have been set by searching "from an eBay category" under sieve properties. it is these searches under which i can't see the additional retrieval options under the "options" pulldown menu.

the searches i have set to run "by performing an ebay search" allow me to edit the additional retrieval options under the "options" pulldown menu.

i can't remember why i did some one way and others the other, i think it was due to perceived speed.

nev · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 1:31 pm Post subject:

Ah yes, I have debated with myself many times over whether I should get rid of 'category sieves' - or rather, convert them. Here's why.

As far as I've been able to figure out, you can specify to search within a category and if you specify a search term of '-' (a single dash), it will just return everything in the category.

If I converted the category sieves to do this, then I could provide all the other search options.

Here's the question though - I'm not sure that it produces exactly the same results.

Can you help me out and try it for me? Ie take your category sieves and create similar search sieves - ie specify a search term of '-' (without the quotes) and specify "Only search in categories" and add the category.

One thing I'm not sure about is whether doing this automatically includes sub-categories.

durianfish · Posted: Wed Aug 30, 2006 2:56 am Post subject:

first time i tried this i screwed it up, second time it worked AOK. it included items in the sub categories also. i'll set up all my sieves to operate this way now. thanks yet again.

durianfish · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 2:04 am Post subject:

Nev, I've gone back to using the category sieves for the searches I'm running, and I've come up against the problem that I had earlier: I'm missing out on a small number of high value auctions that start below the minimum value I've set on the LHS of the screen, then rise above it.

From what I can see, 99.999% of all auctions that start at 99¢ are not worth my time to identify, track and buy, so I use a minimum value filter to cut them out. Trouble is, there is the odd auction for a $10k+ item that starts at 99¢, and I miss it as I've downloaded it and when the price rises above $10 (or $100 or whatever figure I set) it is blocked by the value filter.

As I deal in a wide range of items within certain categories, I don't search for specific terms, just any items within those categories that I believe are worth buying. If you could add the search refinements to category sieves that are available for the others, I reckon that would set me up fine.

Missing out on an eBay item ain't the end of the world, but the stakes are higher for these more valuable items! Can you let me know if this can be done?

nev · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 11:00 am Post subject:

Why did you go back? Was the other way of performing the search not giving the same results?

durianfish · Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 1:51 am Post subject:

it's been a while, but from memory i though it was because i couldn't search more than 1 ebay site at a time using this method (ie canada, germany, australia, england etc all at the same time. i've just tried replicating the problem again with a new sieve, but it's working (of course). i'll try these afresh and will let you know if the problem presents itself again. thanks,