Taobao Field Guide » searching

Myserious Zero-Result Searches

The Field Guide — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:03:06 +0000

You run a search on Tuesday for a Tickle-Me-Elmo doll. You find a bunch. Then you come back on Wednesday and there are zero results! What happened?

Keep an eye on the Category next to the Search Bar.

Sometimes Taobao thinks it knows what you are looking for, and will decide a category for you. This is often very helpful. For example, if I search for an SD card, it changes the category to only search within SD Cards.

Notice that the navigation bar is blue – we are in Taobao’s electronics section. But if I change my mind about the SD card and want to search for some stuffed Elmo instead, we might have a problem. Taobao thinks it still knows what I want, and continues to search only within the SD card category. So a search for Elmo gets zero results.

If I wasn’t such a smart guy, I might think that Taobao doesn’t have any Elmo stuff. Luckily, I’m super smart. So I click on the Category Menu and look for 所有分类 all categories.

That’s right! Over 1000 Elmo products. Tricky Taobao thought it could fool me. Notice also that the Navigation bar changes from blue to orange. That’s because we went from Taobao’s electronics market back to their general market.

Have you ever been tricked by Taobao’s zero-result searches?

Searching Taobao – No Chinese Required

The Field Guide — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 05:02:48 +0000

If the stuff you want is not covered in our awesome guide to stuff to buy on Taobao, you will have to run a search. Here are a few quick tips to help you find good stuff.

Just Search in English

About 90% of the time, a Taobao search with an English word will hit the mark. Many products on Taobao are labeled with both English and Chinese names. And a growing number are labeled with English names alone.

Use the English Name to Find the Chinese Name

You can also use an English-language search to help determine the Chinese name. This will often help you find more products so you have more choices.

For example, a search for “drill” comes up with less than 200 results. But two of the results give a clue to the Chinese name. We can copy/paste 电钻 back into Taobao to get over 7000 results.

Online Machine Translation

Machine translators are perfect for the quick and dirty work of finding keywords and product names. Google is also familiar with company and brand names. Check out our field guide on Tools to Translate Taobao into English.

Find Something Good?

If your search has turned up something that you want to buy, continue to our guide to how to buy stuff on Taobao. If your search has turned up something that you want to buy, continue to our guide to how to buy stuff on Taobao. Or if you want to become a master of the search, check out our tips for filtering your Taobao results to find the best choice.

Find the Perfect Treasure with Search Filters

The Field Guide — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 05:02:38 +0000

If you are search for a SD card on Taobao, you currently have have more than 27,000 options. Don’t just pick the one at the top of the list! Find the one that is best for you by filtering your results.

1. Category

The first filtering opportunity is with the product category. These text links display all the categories and subcategories that have results matching your search term. Click on any of them to see only things in that category.

2. Price

Next, you can click on the 价格 price to arrange them by price with the lowest costs at the top (not including delivery costs).

If you want to find items in a certain price range, type in your low or high costs here. This is useful if you want to find accessories for your phone, and you want to filter out the very cheap stuff and listings selling the phone itself.

3. Location

Filtering by location can save you time and delivery costs. This is also particularly important if you want to buy large things. Many Sellers of large, bulky items deliver themselves if it is within the same city.

These are just the quickest, easiest ways to find what you want. As you can tell, there are many other things that you can filter (such as second hand products, bulk purchases and Sellers overseas).

Do you use any other search filters?