E-bay saved searches

I know that a few people here scour e-bay, probably with saved searches, so I wonder if anyone could advise how to overcome a problem that I have and can't see how to cure.

I've saved a search for ''Taskers'' as in Taskers trailers, but I get lots of e-mail notifications for ''Tuskers'' which appears to be a fashion shoe. How do I convince the stupid system that I do indeed mean Taskers and I haven't misspelled Tuskers?

Cheers Julian.

Sorry, try taskers -tuskers

NHH

Double Dutch! Any chance of a decode?

Julian.

Most search engines use a form of Boolean logic and the 'operators' which enable a search to be narrowed/refined.

The main operators are AND, NOT, OR and ( ).

You can also, in ebays example (as Nick pointed out) use the - or negative symbol to exclude words from the search.

So "Taskers Trailers" -Tuskers would look for "Taskers Trailers" as a string and not just Taskers, and would exclude "Tuskers".

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

OK, so I'll modify it to Taskers - Tuskers. Would that do it? I specifically don't want the word ''trailers'' in there because some descriptions use the term ''low-loader'' whilst others don't.

There's very little Taskers stuff anyway, but tons of Tuskers shoes :-(

Julian.

I think ebay requires the NOT operator (-) to be contiguous with the word to be excluded thus:-

Taskers -Tuskers

Whether it will still try to second guess you if it doesn't find anything spot-on, I don't know.

NHH

OK, thanks, as normal the devil is in the detail!

I'll keep you informed!

Julian.

Just tried it on a simple manual search and entering just 'Taskers' resulted in about 1/2 Doz hits plus a message saying "Did you mean Tuskers?". Entering 'Taskers -Tuskers' killed the message, as did simply '+Taskers'!

NHH

You don't need to put anything fancy in the original search. just click advanced search and you can exclude any word you want. Kev

taskers-tuskers=failed! So much for this Boolean logic! Still getting tuskers shoes e-mail notifications...

Does ''t'' or ''T'' make any difference?

Julian.

It works perfectly for me (and the searches are case insensitive). Go to advanced search. enter Taskers then go to the exclusions boxes and enter tuskers (and shoes and table if you like). THEN save the new search in place of the old one or save it under a new name and delete the old one.

ttfn

The other posters said: taskers -tuskers Note the spaces and lack of them.

John

Yes, that's all very well but you're not employing this fangled Boolean logic which I have been given instruction on how to use!

Julian.

Yes, but I have the NOT operator contiguous with the word to exclude. There has been no mention thus far of it needing (or not needing) to be contiguous with the search word.

Julian.

Taskers(SPACE)-(NO SPACE)Tuskers. Just seemed simpler than going into the advanced search option - clearly not!

NHH

I'll try again!

Julian.