All words, any order

Searches for item titles that contain all the words you entered (or variations of them), no matter what order they appear. For example, searching for "Sony DVD player" would find items that had any of these titles: "DVD players Sony", "Sony DVD players", "Sony player for DVDs." Note: To find more matches, we automatically expand your search to include words with the same meaning as the ones you entered.

Any words, any order

Searches for item titles that contain any of the words you entered that appear in any order. For example, searching for "Sony DVD player" would find items that had any of these titles: "DVD player", "Sony player", "Sony DVD", "DVD", "Sony", "player", and many others.

Exact words, exact order

Searches for item titles that contain the exact words you entered, in the exact order you entered them. For example, searching for "Sony DVD player" would only find items had the words "Sony DVD player" in the title, in that order. For example, "Sony DVD player in box" or "Sony DVD player used" would be matches, but "Sony player DVD" would not.

Exact words, any order

Searches the item titles for the exact words you entered, in any order. For example, searching for "Sony DVD player" would find titles that contained the exact words "Sony", "DVD" and "player" but in any order. For example, "New Sony in box DVD player" or "DVD player, new Sony" would be matches, but "Sony DVD players" or "Sony DVDs player" would not.

Operator

What it Does

Example

Quotation marks (also known as double-quotes)

Searches for only the word or phrase in the listing title

"Action" DVD returns items that have the exact words Action and DVD in the title in any order.

“Action DVD" returns items that have these two words in the title in this specific order.

Asterisk (*)

Acts as a wild card operator

Note: An * cannot be used at the beginning of a query (it must be preceded by at least two other characters)

book* returns items that have words starting with book in the title, such as books, bookshelf, and bookmark.

Parentheses around items separated by commas

Act together as an OR operator

Note: You should use parentheses around items separated by commas together for best results

(purse,handbag) returns items that contain either the word purse OR handbag in the title.

Minus sign (-)

Acts as a NOT operator

Note: You need a space before the minus sign and no space after

Red -shoes returns items that have red in the title and do NOT have shoes in the title.

bowl -(black,green) or bowl -black -green returns items whose titles contain the word bowl but not the words black, and green.

Expansion type

What it does

Example

Keyword to keyword

Modifies your keyword query to search for either your original keyword, or a synonymous keyword from our dictionary.

Searches for red shoes will return items that have the words red and either shoe or shoes in the title.

Keyword to category

Modifies your query to search for items that have a specific keyword in the title or live in a specific related category.

Searches for Harry Potter DVD will return items that have Harry Potter in the title and have either DVD in the title, or live in the DVDs category.

Keyword to item specifics

Modifies your query to search for items that have the keywords from the original query in the title, or have particular item specifics used in the item description.

A search for Nike Golf will return items that have golf in the title and either have Nike in the title, or have Brand=Nike specified in the item specifics section of the description.