Auction Searches History.. Stats

[Idealproductsales]

Just thinking about ways a seller might want to utilize ebid, especially those that develop wide and varied sources of supply -

Is there anywhere that searches are logged? What I mean is, when people do a search on the site for a particular item or keyword/keywords, just how difficult would it be to stash a log of searched keywords in a separate database (somewhere that hits on the database arent gonna affect the site's performance) and over time, accumulate statistics on what buyers are really looking for..

Basically a way of giving sellers a glimpse into the overall markets and seeing "what's hot" and what people that come to ebid actually look for in the auctions search (similar to the tag cloud at the bottom of forums, for stuff that is searched in forums)

Such a database of stored search history would be an invaluable resource to sellers like myself (heck, I'd be willing to subscribe to it if it was a service offered - 5 bucks a month added to my ebid bill , I'd be first in line to sign up for it!)

I would LOVE to have that sort of data available to search and filter through , along with history of ended auctions, with starting bid and final sale price all listed (of course, no need to track the actual seller, as I dont think I would find that info useful for the purposes of gauging the market here)

So, if such a feature is not currently available here (only thing I know of to do is search ended auctions, and that doesnt bring up data in a compiled statistics format) .. and if it is any incentive - I would be more than happy to subscribe to such a service as an ongoing paid subscription *in addition* to whatever monthly fees come my way (as result of FVF, etc)

It'd be a very nice feature to have, and since it could very easily be stored to a completely separate database (perhaps a spare machine laying around with a nice zippy SCSI 15K rpm drive and a pile of RAM plus extra swap space, under a different, authenticated realm such as "prosellers.ebid.net" for example.. ) - such a service could easily pay for itself in a matter of months - and then add more profit to ebid.net for future expansion, extra help and employees, etc... say 100 subscribers at 5 bucks a month = 500 bucks a month.. would easily at least pay for it's own rack space in the data center... and then some

Just some thoughts...

[astral276]

Searches would seem to be stored somewhere as there is a list of recent searches on eBid's front page - unless they are totally making the list up.

Probably would be a low priority task for eBid but if they ever bring out the API someone else might take a shot at it.

There could be a lot more filter options on search. There are the links on the front page to display items closing soon, recently posted and popular. Why are these not repeated in the standard search box dropdown? Along with some others - such as Items Less Than £1.00 (or relevant currency). The more ways you give a user to find what they are after the more chance of a sale.

[somersethedge]

it must be possible as there is a specialised postcard/stamp online auction site I use that has this very feature on the front page (and a couple of other pages as well), which is also fairly "live" (I think it updates every 30mins or so)

[Gothicina]

Searches would seem to be stored somewhere as there is a list of recent searches on eBid's front page - unless they are totally making the list up.

It's not made up, although they did have to add filters to stop undesirable recent searches showing on the front page
http://helpdesk.ebid.net/showthread.php?t=92808