[meteorite-list] eBay Trickery - How to exclude China from search results

[Bob King]

Great sleuthing, Michael. And very helpful. Thank you!
Bob

On Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 7:09 PM Michael Gilmer via Meteorite-list <
meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com> wrote:

> Hi Listees and Collectors,
>
> A long time ago, eBay gave you more options for filtering a seller's
> location in the results.
>
> Now, you can search the US, North America, Worldwide, or within a
> specified mile-radius distance. You no longer have an option to search
> by country or to easily exclude China from results. Or....do you?
>
> I used to like searching just European dealers, but if you try that
> now, your only option is to select "worldwide" and wade through a ton
> of Chinese listings.
>
> I found a way around this by deconstructing the URL of a given set of
> search results.
>
> Let's try it.
>
> I searched for "meteorite" with "US Only" selected for the item
> location. The URL of the results is :
>
> https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313&_nkw=meteorite&_sacat=0&rt=nc&_odkw=meteorite+-tektite&_osacat=0&_sop=10&LH_PrefLoc=1&LH_All=1
>
> A lot of junk there that is not of interest to us. But, notice the
> string of characters "PrefLoc" - this stuck out to me. PREFerred
> LOCation methinks. The value is set to "=1", so I started changing
> this number.
>
> Apparently, the following numbers are valid :
>
> 0 = no change?
> 1 = US
> 2 = Worldwide
> 3 = North America
> 4 = no change?
> 5 = EU
> 6 = China
> 7+ = error
>
> Changing the "=1" to "=5" brings back only items located in Europe
> with no Chinese listings!
>
> Any number higher that 6 results in an "invalid item location" error.
>
> Enjoy!
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