How to Do an Advanced eBay Search

Performing an advanced search on eBay is easy: Simply click Advanced Search on any eBay page, and you're brought to the Advanced Search page. On this search form, you’ll see about four dozen boxes. You can fill out some or all of them. The more information you type into this form, the more concise your search can be.

Suppose that your favorite china pattern has been discontinued and you want to search eBay for some missing pieces. To quickly find the pieces, follow this process:

Determine the manufacturer’s name.
Determine the name for the series, collection, pattern, or design.

Sometimes an item has more than one name. In this example, you may be searching for Bistro (the name of the collection) and Maribo (the pattern name).
Narrow your search even further, if possible.

For example, you may need to replace just a salad plate.
Enter the words for your search and press Enter.

In this example, you may type Dansk Bistro Maribo salad into the keyword box. If someone has listed an item with all those words in the title, you’ll be lucky and pull up some winners.
After you get your search results, you can narrow your search by searching in a category.

Use the drop-down list at the top of the results to limit your search to a particular main (or top-level) category instead of searching all eBay categories.

These search results, in List View, show salad plates in the Pottery & China subcategory.

Keep in mind that items often cross over different categories. When they do, eBay lists (on the left side of the page) the actual categories where the search items were found.
Tell eBay how you want the results arranged by using the sort By drop-down list.

For example, if you want to check out auctions in order of how soon they’re closing, choose Items Ending Soonest. In the Sort By area, choose one of the following options:
- Best Match
- Time: Ending Soonest
- Time: Newly Listed
- Price + Shipping: Lowest First
- Price + Shipping: Highest First
- Price: Highest First
- Distance: Nearest First
- Category
Use the next drop-down list to select how you want to view the results.

You have three choices:
- List View: The standard eBay format of the gallery picture on the left and the listing information to the right.
- Gallery View: Here you see the search results in little boxes.
  
  In the Gallery view, each listing takes up a large amount of your screen’s real estate.
- Snapshot View: Pictures only, without pricing.
  
  You get to see nice pictures and nothing else in the Snapshot View.
Select how many items you want to see on a page.

eBay searches default to 50 items per page; in list view, the options are 25, 50, 100, and 200.