Hone Your Auction Searches

George Campbell

Sometimes, searching an Internet auction site can be difficult. Search queries for popular items also tend to dredge up huge lists of irrelevant products, making it more difficult to find just the stuff you want. By using the auction site's sorting tools, however, you can narrow down the list by moving the items you particularly want to see to the top of the list.

For example, many searches list related items of very low value as well as those with high value. By sorting the list to show the high value items first, you can sometimes avoid scrolling through pages of items that don't interest you.

If you only bid on items the day the auction closes, you can sort the list to put those items at the top of the list. Here's how to sort lists on EBay, Amazon.com Auctions, and Yahoo Auctions.

• On EBay: Type your search terms in any search box, and then hit the Enter key. Once the initial list of items appears, click the arrow next to the Sort field to bring up the Sort menu, then choose one of the options and click Go. Note: Once you've set a sort order, all subsequent searches will use the same sorting strategy until you change it.
• On Amazon.com Auctions: Click Advanced Search on any page. Once on the Advanced Search page, type in your search text, then pick a sort method from the Sort By list. Click Search Now to activate the search. To re-sort a completed search, pick one of the options from the Sort Listings By menu. As in Yahoo Auctions, this sort method doesn't apply to subsequent searches.
• On Yahoo Auctions: Perform an initial search. When the item list appears, look at the top of the list. You'll see category names over each column of the list. Click any of these names (such as Current Bid or Time Left) to sort the list according to that category. Click it again to reverse the sort order. For example, to see items with the lowest prices first, click Current Bid. Click Current Bid again to re-sort the window so the highest-priced items are listed first. This setting does not apply to subsequent searches, so you'll have to sort the list each time you search.