Industry guru Dave Taylor offers tech support on technical and business topics, including iPhone, iPod, Microsoft Windows, Sony PSP, cellphones, online advertising, CSS, Web design, business, Unix, Linux, SEO, Mac OS X, and shell script programming.     


Add an eBay Search Box to Your Web Page

Dave, help, how I would go about adding an eBay search field to my homepage, one that I could enter a search term in and get the results popped up on the eBay website?


Dave's Answer:

First off, some background: How can I add a Google search box to my web site and How do I add a Technorati search box to my Web site?

Now that we've established the theme :-) let's look at how eBay structures queries. If you actually view the source to the eBay Web page, it's just about impossible to decipher how they do searches, actually, because of all the JavaScript they're using. Not sure why they need the complexity, but fortunately a bit of detective work can suss out the most important values, the field names and the CGI script or program on the server that receives search queries.

Boiling their form down to its bare essence, then:

<form method="get"
  action="http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll">
<input type="hidden" name="sojs" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="from" value="R40">
<input type="text" maxlength="300" name="satitle" size="20">
<input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>

Here's an example of it at work:

Experimentation reveals that you don't need to send either the sojs or the from fields either, so in fact the smallest possible eBay search box looks like this:

<form method="get"
  action="http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll">
<input type="text" maxlength="300" name="satitle" size="20">
<input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>

I'll leave all the fancy cleanup and design work to you, but those few lines of code should definitely get you moving in the right direction!


More Useful Auctions and Online Shopping Articles:
✔   How can I sell a used gadget on Amazon.com?
I have a bunch of electronic gadgets in my office that are just sitting around and I notice that they're worth a decent...
✔   How do I return something to Amazon.com?
Hey Dave, I bought a new backpack through Amazon.com and when it arrived, I realized I didn't like it and really want to...
✔   What annual subscriptions do I have set up in PayPal?
As it's the last day of the year, I'm thinking about recurring billing that's going to kick in starting again in 2013 through...
✔   What's a used computer really worth?
Hi Dave. I bumped into this note on Facebook, a post from a friend: "Thinking about selling my 17" MacBook Pro. It's 3...
✔   How long have I been a member of eBay?
I was arguing with a friend the other day and he said that he'd been on eBay since it first came online. I...

Let's stay in touch!
Sign up for my weekly AskDaveTaylor Newsletter and you'll receive even more tech and gadget help right to your inbox, along with exclusive news and industry updates. It's good stuff. I promise!
    Enter your name: and your email addr:  




Categorized: Auctions and Online Shopping   (Article 4146, Written by )
Tagged:
Previous: How important is my Business Plan?
Next: What is AdSense Section Targeting?




Reader Comments To Date: 11

Dave said, on August 23, 2005 11:27 PM:

Dave, you are officially a genius. Cheers mate!

Ross said, on November 11, 2005 11:24 PM:

Cheers Dave, I'm just creating my custom start page at http://www.protopage.com and this is just the ticket for my quick search box.

Elaine said, on March 20, 2007 2:13 PM:

Hello,

I tried to cut and paste a few of your suggestions like "ask dave", the froogle, and the ebay search but some of the script shows up on the page. I copied exactly what you have listed and pasted into site designer. Do you have any suggestions? If all else fails I will paste your url. Thanks, your site is very informative!

Dave Taylor said, on March 20, 2007 9:59 PM:

Elaine, the problem is probably because you're cutting and pasting into the "text input" mode in your page editor. Try looking in the help system to see if there's a "code" or "raw" or "html" view you can enable: then the code you cut and paste will be correctly included as HTML, rather than "fixed" as text.

Will said, on October 29, 2007 1:50 PM:

Dave, I got the search box into my site but I need to be able to use it to search both title and description. I have not had any luck getting that part in. I need this because I encode the description of an eBay listing with a specific number giving my customers an easy way to look at their items only. Thanks for the help

Dave Taylor said, on November 27, 2007 10:56 AM:
Jesse said, on December 17, 2007 10:47 AM:

Thanks Dave this is great, but I was wondering if I could add my affiliate link to the search results. You can link to search results or any ebay page using this tool http://affiliates.ebay.com/ns/FlexTool.htm
So I was wondering if I could work this into the script. Thanks for any ideas.
Jesse

George said, on December 22, 2007 10:52 AM:

Hi Dave

Can you add affiliate information to the results? Same question as Jessie.

Thank you Dave for the great information!!!


George
www.quickieclick.com

john said, on April 30, 2009 1:14 PM:

Is there a way to only searxh Buy it nows?

Great coding thanks!

AcmeUK said, on September 18, 2009 4:09 AM:

Hi Dave

Great bit of info.

Is there any way that I can access my saved eBay searches?

Thanks

Aamir said, on March 17, 2011 8:59 AM:

Dave is there any possibility for adding an ebay search field to my wordpress site that will return results on my site page not on ebay site and after clicking on the result then only a visitor will be directed to ebay site as like google custom search.

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











I will never send you any unsolicited email. Ever.






Check This Out Too...

 
Look for Answers
Need Help? Ask Dave Taylor!


Follow Me on Pinterest

Find Me on Google+
ADT on G+
© 2002 - 2013 by Dave Taylor. All Rights Reserved.

Note: This web site is for the purpose of disseminating information for educational purposes, free of charge, for the benefit of all visitors. We take great care to provide quality information. However, we do not guarantee, and accept no legal liability whatsoever arising from or connected to, the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of any material contained on this web site or on any linked site. Further, please note that by submitting a question or comment you're agreeing to my terms of service, which are: you relinquish any subsequent rights of ownership to your material by submitting it on this site. My lawyer says "Thanks".
"Ask Dave Taylor®" is a registered trademark of Intuitive Systems, LLC.