posted on June 26, 2003 04:38:58 AM new
I recently did an eBay search, and in addition to the expected results, up came a few odd entries. I assumed the usual keyword spamming, hidden text type of thing, but was curious as to why someone would have done it for one of the items, since there was no logical connection to the search word.
So, I pulled the source for the page, searched it for the word, and it does not appear anywhere. Checked another mismatch (different seller) and same thing.
Just curious how this happens. Not worth spending a lot of time on, but the juxtaposition of the keyword search and the result creates some disturbing images in my mind.
posted on June 26, 2003 04:46:12 AM new
Who knows why weird things happen on ebay. Maybe too many ghost in a bottle auctions. I get unusual results in searches all the time. Some are spamming, others are not. Weird, yes. Unusual, not so much.
Cheryl
My religion is simple, my religion is kindness.
--Dalai Llama
posted on June 26, 2003 12:27:03 PM new
It helps if you think of an eBay search as a database lookup. All this stuff is just files on a computer (okay, a really powerful computer with a lot of storage, but still). There is no such thing as perfect I/O. The records you got that did not match your string were probably very slightly corrupted in some fashion.
Most of the time we ignore it and move on because the error is transient. Today I've gotten "this function is not available" errors a couple of times. Doesn't mean anything. Earlier this week I was getting connected to port 80 on one of the cgi.ebay.com machines and when I listed something, it said it charged me 15 cents. (In actuality it charged me the usual 30 cents.)
As they say south of the border, caca pasa.
--
California voters: Be a part of the first-ever successful gubernatorial recall! Defy media pundits! $21 million of our money is going down the tubes daily because of our incompetent corrupt governor. Visit http://www.recallgraydavis.com to download your recall petition.
posted on June 26, 2003 12:50:46 PM new
there was a thread some time ago about hidden keywords in auction on ebay...it was before the moderators and a lot of the posters left the site so i can't remember exactly what was said but..
certain sellers had a huge list of keywords tied to one word in the auction and these auctions showed up in just about every search
