Captured Searches

Captured Searches are deprecated and are no longer recommended for use.

We recommend using Standard Searches or Bookmark Pages instead.

eBay started requiring Javascript to view and retrieve their search results from their websites.

This broke Captured Searches and there is no easy workaround.

The old documentation follows:

Any search with any settings on eBay or eBay Motors can be saved in the Search Tree.

Steps

1.	Make the search on eBay.

2.	Right-click on the Group or Page where you want to place the Captured Search, and select New / Search / Captured Search. This will bring up the Capture Search dialog.

3.	Prospector is able to tell when you are on an eBay page that can be captured, and it will automatically fill in the eBay search address box.

4.	Enter a name for the search, and click OK.

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Control	Description
Search name	Enter a name that you want to represent this search. This name will show on the Search Tree, and it will be the title of a set of results if this search is placed directly under a Tab Page.
eBay search address	An eBay search address. If you are already on a page that can be captured, Prospector will pre-fill this box with the current address. You can also copy and paste addresses into this box.
Make this search subtractive	If this is selected, the items found by this search will be removed from the search results of its non-subtractive siblings within the parent group or page. Please see Subtractive Searches for more information.

Property tab

Control	Description
Price Min and Max	Enter the minimum and maximum price for the items that you want to see. Leave it blank for no restriction.
Bids Min and Max	Enter the minimum and maximum number of bids that you want the items to have. Leave it blank for no restriction.
Pictures	You can choose to see only the items that have pictures, or only the items that don't. An item has a picture if it has a Gallery image that shows up as a thumbnail in eBay's search results, or if it has a "Listing has pictures" icon ().
Ending	You can choose to see only listings that are ending within a certain number of hours or days.
New items only	Check this box if you only want to see items that have been listed in the last 24 hours. These are items that eBay marks with a "New listing" icon ().

Title Tab

SellerSearch2

Control

Description

Title must have / must not have

Enter one or more words that the title must or must not have. This restricts the results to having at least one of these words, or none of these words in the item titles. A case-insensitive match is done with wildcards on either side of each word.

These options can be used to:

·	Filter Standard Searches that you make with the "Search title and description" option

·	Filter Seller, Bidder and Category, and Captured Searches where you want to further filter the results to see only the items that you're interested in. For instance, you may only be interested in a subset of a seller's offerings.

Title must / must not match

Enter a regular expression that the title must or must not match.

Presentation Tab

CapturedSearch3

Control	Description
Thumbnails	You can choose to show or not show thumbnail images, or to display all thumbnails as Picture icons for a more compact presentation. If this search belongs to a Search Group, the Search Group's thumbnails setting will override this setting.
Display by	Select the initial sort order for the search results. By default, the results are shown sorted by ascending end time. If this search belongs to a Search Group, the Search Group's display setting will override this setting.
Highlight results	Select a color if you want the search results to be highlighted automatically. You can do this to mark items of interest, or to classifying your results.
Replace existing highlighting	Check this box if you want the highlighting to overwrite any highlighting that is present. By default, highlighting that is already present will be left unchanged.

Memo tab

SellerSearch4

The memo tab lets you store notes for the search. The notes will be shown with the search results, and they don't affect searching.

Notes

Captured Searches can be used with any eBay search with any set of options, so in this regard, their coverage is complete and is a superset of the coverage provided by the Standard and Seller searches.

The internet address, however, locks the search to a specific eBay site.

Here's a chart comparing Captured Searches with the other search types in Prospector:

Feature	Captured Search	Item, Store, Product Id, Seller, Bidder, and Category searches
The eBay site where the search is made changes with the default eBay site.	No - the address ties the search to a specific eBay site.	Yes, whichever is the default site, it is searched.
A search with many search parameters like item attributes is needed.	Most suitable.	Limited to the options provided.
Speed of search	Slow, best used for searches that do not return a large number of items.	Considerably faster (> 10x)

Due to limitations in the eBay programming interface, Captured Searches are slower to update than the other search types. Where possible, we recommend using one of the other search types instead.

Because Captured Searches are tied to a specific site, they are suitable for searches spanning multiple eBay sites. For example, you can create a search group with captured searches from eBay Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, etc. to search the wider region.