It used to work....(snivel)

March 5, 2010 12:49 PM

My Mac used to be able to get RSS feeds of my Ebay searches with Safari but lately all I get is a list links with photos that never seems to update. Googling doesn't turn up any body having the same issue, so what am I doing wrong? Craigslist and Kijiji search feeds still work fine.

When I view a page of search results from Ebay, it doesn't show the usual blue/grey rss feed symbol at the right side of the address bar. I need to scroll down to the orange rss link at the bottom of the page. When I click on it or save it to my menu bar, I get a list with photos but this list isn't a proper feed. It never updates.

I'm running Leopard 10.5.8 and Safari 4.0.4. I had older Ebay feeds bookmarked and they were still working fine.

Also, I like Safari fine for everything else I do, so I'd rather not switch.

posted by bonobothegreat to computers & internet (4 answers total)

You might try clearing out the RSS feed cache: Fixing Safari RSS Feeds
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:04 PM on March 5, 2010

Hmmm, thanks Blazecock but I'm not sure what's going on.

Terminal reports "No matching processes belonging to you were found" and neither of my disk nor user libraries show any folder called "syndication". My other feeds are all working normally.The Ebay RSS link is sending me some sort of weird http address rather than a proper feed (that should normally show a little newspaper symbol at the left of the address and say "feed").
posted by bonobothegreat at 1:29 PM on March 5, 2010

EBay did some crazy-ass stuff with their RSS feeds recently. They're "improving" them, don't'cha know.

I wonder if this is a sort issue. How are you sorting the search results before clicking for RSS? Newly Listed, Best Match, etc?

If you can provide an RSS URL, I'd be happy to test it in my combo (Windows Vista/Firefox) and see if it works or not. That would narrow down whether it's your system or the search.
posted by ErikaB at 8:15 PM on March 5, 2010

Sure Erika, the RSS url that ebay is giving me seems to be the problem but I don't think it's just a sorting issue (I have it set to newly listed). For example, ebay is returning urls like this: "http://antiques.shop.ebay.ca/Architectural-Garden-/4707/i.html?_nkw=doorbell&_dmpt=Architectural_Garden&_rss=1&_sc=1&_sop=10" rather than a proper feed address such as "feed://toronto.kijiji.ca/f-SearchAdRss?CatId=15&Keyword=speakers&Location=80001&useLocalAddress=false".

Again, most sites other than ebay show a little RSS symbol in the top right of the address bar and ebay offer me that anymore, just an orang button at the bottom of the page.
posted by bonobothegreat at 3:08 PM on March 6, 2010