Browsing or SearchingWhich One Is for You?

There are two main ways to locate items to bid on and buy on eBay. You can leisurely browse through eBay's thousands of categories and subcategories, or you can perform a targeted search for specific items.

Table 7.1 shows you what's good and what's bad about both browsing and searching.

Table 7.1. Browsing Versus SearchingStrengths and Weaknesses

Question	Browsing	Searching
How easy is it to do?	Easyjust click through the categories and subcategories	Not as easyyou have to enter specific keywords in a query
How quickly can you find a specific item?	Slowall that clicking takes time	Fastyou get immediate results for your query
How many items will you find?	A lotwhich may be too many	Not quite as manywhich may be just enough
Will you find the specific item you're looking for?	Not alwayssometimes items aren't categorized properly	Yesassuming the seller puts the right keywords in the listing title
Can you isolate items geographically?	Yesyou can narrow your results by region	Yesyou can narrow your results by region
Can you find other bidders and sellers?	Nothere's no way to browse through the millions of other eBay users	YeseBay lets you search by user name

The bottom line: If you're not sure what you're looking for, or if you're looking for all types of items within a general category, you should browse. If you're looking for a specific item or type of item, you should search.

"Mike Sez"

Many eBay categories are so large they're practically unbrowsable. (Do you really want to click through a hundred pages of listings to find the item you want?) I definitely recommend searching over browsingyou'll find what you're looking for a lot faster!