eBay is Down – Search Function Is Coming Up With Zero Results

Ebay is down.  When users try to search their query comes back with 0 results.  Ebay has posted the following message to users:

“Due to errors in some of our backend systems, members may be seeing different errors in Search. This could be that “We were unable to run the search results you entered. Please try again in a few minutes” or a blank page, or simply the browser being unable to display the page.

This is also affecting the ability to access eBay Stores through search directly, and sometimes from the store URL.

Workarounds – Buy It Now Search and Advanced Search
If you use the Advanced Search option at the top of the page, and type in your search query and click the title and description box and then run the search, the results for the title and description search will be returned.

Alternatively, if you receive a 0 results page for title search and click the Buy It Now tab (or choose the title and description box and re-run the search), you’ll see the (Buy It Now or title and description) results for your search query.

Please note that we are working as quickly as possible to get this resolved. Thank you for your patience as we continue to work to resolve this.”

Update 1 – Ebay has begun to restore the ability to search and according to eBay spokes person, John Pluhowski: “… full functionality should be restored by Sunday, as the fix for the technical issue was being implemented across the site.”   According to Mr. Pluhowski, “eBay would be issuing refunds to sellers,” but did not yet provide details on how.

Update 2 – Ebay has released a new statement that includes details on how sellers can receive credit:

“Search functionality is almost fully restored.

We will be issuing full credits for all affected items for this title search outage as outlined in our site outage policy published here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/everyone-outage.html.

There is no need to contact us to receive a credit for your affected item. Credits for those items will take several days but should be completed within a week. We understand how important this time of year is for your business and shopping experience and sincerely apologize.”

Update 3 -eBay issued what to appears one a final statement from the CEO, Lorrie Norrington apologizing to sellers and again stressing that this was a just an accident.  Mrs. Norrington did comment that some search functions are still down:

“…we have kept some secondary search features temporarily offline. This includes refining search by certain item specifics, such as color or clothing size, and having Store Inventory Format results included in the main search results. We expect to bring these features online today as part of a phased approach to restore full functionality.”