www.auctionsieve.com

auctionsteve · AuctionSieve regular Joined: 13 Jan 2010 Posts: 12

I have some Users who I like to monitor regularly for any new entries - particularly BIN items.

This is very easy to do in eBay, but seems impossible in auctionsieve.

Auctionsieve will not let me leave the Search Term blank, and I cannot think of a way to make it select all items for the User(s) and category specified.

If anyone has solved this problem I am anxious to find out how.

(Apologies if the answer has been given before: my search gave no viable results.)

nev · Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 2:38 am Post subject:

Hi auctionsteve,

You can leave the search term blank.
Click on Options and you should see the option "Sellers to" Include or Exclude. Put the seller's id in the field.

Are you running the latest version, 2.5.7?

Nev

auctionsteve · AuctionSieve regular Joined: 13 Jan 2010 Posts: 12

Hi Nev,

I wish it were so.

I do have 2.5.7. If I leave the search term blank, at the second OK I get an alert screen "Enter a search term" with message "Please enter a search term before continuing." Iterate to infinity.

No combination of User and/or Category can get past it.

nev · Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2011 5:24 am Post subject:

Ahhhhhhh, I see.

Ok, just put anything in the search term to get past that screen.
Then change the search term once your on the main screen.

auctionsteve · AuctionSieve regular Joined: 13 Jan 2010 Posts: 12

Rather than my flabber being gasted, my hopes lie dashed.

Say on the main screen I run a query which is restricted by user/category/BIN. It has a non-blank search term which returns 15 items.

If I blank out the search term at the top of the screen, I get NO items. I expect at least 15. ('Ignore options already seen' is off.)

nev · Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2011 12:13 pm Post subject:

Hmmm, well that's always been more of a hack than anything reliably tested. Sad

eBay sometimes shows quite different results depending on how it's called.

For example, I've just tried it on one user.
Using Australian eBay and searching for user daveba1

If I view the seller's items I get 781 results.
Via AuctionSieve and the way it's querying eBay, it gets 637 results.

And there's an explanation! When I look at the pages eBay is returning to AuctionSieve, it appears to be restricting the list to items that can be posted to Australia - daveba1 is in the UK.

Could this be what's happening in your instance?

auctionsteve · AuctionSieve regular Joined: 13 Jan 2010 Posts: 12

I was sure your surmise was not the reason for my demise, so I went back to first principles testing.

It seems that the Search term qualifier for a blank search must be 'All of these words'. Most of my searches use 'Any of these words', and when I reset for blank I left it that way. It works for one or multiple users.

Thanks, Nev. Your concrete example made me look at it from a different direction.