Product Catalog now live in search
Ladies and gentlemen,
As of our most recent deploy, you may now see something like the following next time you search on Bonanza:
This is the first glimpse into the data that we have collected in the course of building our product catalog. The goal here is to be the first marketplace to actually understand what the user is searching for, rather than the "blind word match"-style of search results that are still the norm for most sites. By implementing a semantic understanding of our merchandise, we will be able to offer product reviews, limit extraneous results, and ultimately, help buyers narrow down their focus much faster than a traditional marketplace.
Though we are beginning to expose the data contained in our catalog, we are still actively working on adding new entries, and associating our existing entries with the 4 million+ items available for sale on Bonanza. Expect to see morebetter uses of the catalog as it continues to evolve, and as always, let us know if you have ideas on how to make the catalog more useful to you.
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15 responses to Product Catalog now live in search
I am completely baffled by this new search. A blind word match is what a buyer is looking for, not a random guess.
If I want to purchase Precious Moments A Wish Is a dream Figurine, I would type just that. What I get now is a Partylite figurine, a 1980 Enesco Figurine, and a Dpt56 figurine, under which are items from Amazon. I actually have this figurine in my booth. Where is it? Yesterday it would show up in a search using any combination of words?
Or I want the Radko Oddles of Poodle ornament, so I type Radko Poodle ornament. I see a clock, a pillow, an ornament hangar, and a donkey. WAY under that is the poodle ornament.
I do not understand why a search would not produce the results a buyer is asking for.
I want to buy a red coach purse. Why is there a Kenneth Cole and three beige purses in the first results? Why is Kenneth Cole even listed under coach?
I wish to purchase a Coach Wristlet. Why do I get a Juicy Couture, Marc Jacob, and Brighton wristlet? Does one have to pay to get unrelated items featured at the top?
Why is the unrelated items box at the top so large?
lol, I want Juicy Couture Baby clothes so I search Juicy Couture Baby, I get a Furby!
Hey MTT,
Many things to address here, but suffice it to say that the 1) we’ve already made some improvements to the catalog products picked since we deployed and you left this comment. 2) part of the mechanism that the picker uses to improve results is to A/B test related items occasionally. This means that the results you see will vary from search-to-search as the algorithm learns what people are after most often for a given search query.
Hope this helps.
I received an email a few weeks back asking me to do a product review for something I bought here on Bonanza. I was fine to do so…but then I got to thinking and wondering if my user ID would be visible on that review. So, I refrained from leaving a review. I see now that the user ID is visible when checking the reviews on say a Vera Bradley Wristlet, for example.
Is there anyway that Bonanza can let us add a different user ID if we so choose or at least mark it that we want the review to have an anonymous user ID?
BTW, a search using the keywords Vera Bradley wristlet did bring up those specific product reviews at the top (with other Vera Bradley Wristlet listings further down below that were not a part of the product review but they were the same style). When I clicked on one of the images for the product review and got taken to the next page, I saw one of my Vera Bradley wallets available for sale. I liked that kind of cross promoting. This is what I saw at this point in time.
Great question, and thanks for the comment. The user ID of the review is what gives it credibility. If we allowed users to leave reviews anonymously, buyers would have less faith as to the source of the review. In the long run, we’re probably more likely to go the other direction and encourage people to post reviews under their actual name rather than their user name (though we’d never require this). The more “real” the reviewer, the more trustworthy the review.
Hopefully, since product reviews are focused on the product rather than the seller there is less concern about offending a particular merchant when you might want to leave a non-positive review. Honesty in reviews is what makes them useful.
Pictures are very big, results are horrible. I looked up Lego and the catalog shows 14 lego sets, really won’t encourage much further searching with results like that. Some items show 0 items in stock. I put in Nintendo, no games come up just a few products, one is socks and one was a GI joe Figure. Some buyers won’t know that there is another site wide search and think these are the only items available, because they won’t scroll down and will just assume that the catalog is all there is.
Getting Lego sets when you look up “lego” doesn’t sound like the most horrible result, but I’m probably misunderstanding something? It sounds like you are using the beta search of the catalog itself, rather than standard item search. You won’t see catalog entries in main search unless they have items available and they match the search query pretty closely.
I am seeing what I consider an odd quirk. You can’t give too much information. Here’s my example. I am selling a particular item from the Robert Tonner Doll Company, If someone searches for the item using the the words Robert Tonner Nu Mood, nothing shows up. Because I put the word Robert in there, and it’s not in the title of the description, the robot doesn’t pick it up.
You’re going to be relying on the fact that the potential buyer knows exactly and precisely the identical words the seller used. No leeway at all.
Carolyn
Hey cshort, it sounds like you are describing one of the exact scenarios that the product catalog is being designed for: it should show results for a product even if the seller hasn’t entered exactly the words the buyer was searching for. We should be able to know a “Robert Tonner” item when its posted, and always return those results if the buyer searches for it.
Currently (and at every other marketplace) our standard search doesn’t return results unless the exact words are in the title or category. We can do better.
Only 14 Lego sets are listed, not much to choose from, is the point, I would see that and click out and be gone. Some buyers won’t scroll down to the regular search and just assume the catalog is all there is. If I was new to a site and saw a catalog why would I think there was more items on the site than what is in the catalog. Sorry but this catalog has so few items, I don’t see it as any benefit. Why would I come here for a Nintendo game, type in Nintendo and not see one game? Most of the listings have 0 items in stock for lego. You don’t have to approve this comment, because there really is no point. But this is really just about the most ridiculous thing ever. If I go and type in Lego on ebay I get 234,000 items, think I will just shop there.
Thanks for the feedback, please drop us a line if you think of any specific ideas for improvement.
Either I’m not understanding, or I’m understanding better than most.
I searched an item of mine using the exact title, just some of the words from my title, and I tried by just entering just my UPC and all the results that come up are Amazon results. In this instant, I’m ok with that because it’s also mine item on Amazon. Either search is broken. Or, it has been redesigned to make sure that Amazon results are the most prevalent in most searches.
What gives?
About two days ago someone (perhaps you) reported that search wasn’t returning numeric items, we’ll have it fixed soon, at which point the UPC/ISBN should be a valid means of search. Thanks for the report.
Typing in a book isbn results in No Matches , and redirects the buyer to Amazon.
I know that the book is available on Bonanza , but have no opportunity to view it.
Therefore I cannot possibly sell it.
Additionally , your " let us guess the category ’ when listing a straightforward example as follows
Title ; " Book, hardcover Non foction " results in 12 Bonanza guesses that include womens fashion , but no books.
See comment above, we just had it reported that ISBN/UPC searches don’t return items at the moment. It will be fixed soon. As to the category guesser, please report any anomalies you see to [email protected] and we’ll get them taken care of. Thanks for your support.
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