Flutterby™! : Negative search

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Negative search

2006-02-27 18:43:36.712864+00 by Dan Lyke 2 comments

I popped over to eBay to look at bicycles. Why don't search engines have an easy "exclude everything from..." option. A way to say "oh, this is a dealer selling off-brand bicycles for roughly what they'd be retail" would cut my category from thousands of items to wade through to a few tens, and would probably give me a better chance of locating the jewels.

The seller's ranking is fine, and if you haven't done your research or just want something with the appropriate check marks on the "has it column" their product is reasonable, but after the second listing I can tell that I'm not interested in anything from them, and they've got tens of items up for bid. If I could clip that down quickly...

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Net Culture Bicycling ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2006-02-27 19:23:48.59502+00 by: Diane Reese

There is such a search option on eBay, Dan.

Go to "advanced search". Enter your search terms on the "keyword or item number" box. Go down about halfway on the page where it says "From Sellers". The second radio button there ("From specific sellers (enter sellers' user IDs)") has the drop-down default of "Include"; change that to "Exclude" and pop in the ID of the sellers you want to exclude from the list. Voila.

Just ask, I'm the queen of eBay.

And I give good hug. ;-)

#Comment Re: made: 2006-02-27 20:13:33.385579+00 by: Dan Lyke

Woohoo! Cool, if this doesn't work out that'll make it a little easier to narrow down the choices.