Jeff King, Senior Director of eBay’s Finding division announced a few days ago that the company will be drastically improving its search engine.  Before making the changes, eBay received constructive feedback, researched, ran through the software development life cycle, and then finally tested the software.  One percent of eBay buyers will notice the change over the next few weeks.

How has it improved?  An example that King gave is that “if a buyer in the test searches for “red size 12 shoes,” instead of looking just for listings with the words ‘red,’ ’size,’ ‘12,’ and ’shoes,’ the search engine will find all of the items in the shoe category that are size 12 in the color red. In the end, the buyer should see more relevant items.”

This project is an improved version of “New Way to Shop,” a feature that eBay introduced in 2005.  As feedback is collected over the next 6 weeks, changes may be implemented.
[Information Source: eBay General Announcements]