To use multiple word searches, or to exclude specific items from your search, is different on each of the auction sites that iTrack supports. Here's a quick rundown on the differences:
Cool Search Tip: By default, Yahoo searches both the auction title and auction descriptions, which can lead to many weird and seemingly irrelevant results. You can easily request that it only search auction titles, however, by prefacing your individual search elements with 'title:'. The 'title:' needs to be after a '+' or '-' (which you'll read about in a second) but before any quotes. This'll make much more sense by example. A search for mickey mouse can be constrained with title:"mickey mouse" or title:mickey title:mouse (the first will only match the phrase Mickey Mouse, but the second would also match 'mouse named mickey' too). We use searches like title:dvd on Yahoo.
If you specify a multiword search pattern, Yahoo Auctions will use an implicit AND between them, which might sound like exactly what you want, but sometimes it isn't. An example: if you're searching for music from the band The Who, a search for exactly that will surprise you: 'the' will match most every listing, and 'who' is also a common word: you'll get lots of Dr. Who matches. To ensure that multiple words are interpreted as a phrase you need to quote them. Try these two searches and watch the different results they produce: The Who and "The Who"
The other fancy thing that you can do on Yahoo Auctions is explicitly require words to be included or excluded. You force words to be included with a '+' and excluded with a '-'. For example, perhaps you collect Disney postage stamps and you need to add a few Mickey stamps to complete your collection. Your first try might be to search on "mickey mouse" stamp but that's not right, because you actually get the results of mickey mouse OR stamp. Here's where the '+' comes in so handy: +"mickey mouse" +stamp is what you want (notice you need to add the '+' to both phrases to limit your matches).
One last example: if you want to watch Palm Pilot prices on Yahoo, but don't want to see any CDs of third-party software, your best bet is to use "palm pilot" -cd.
Compared to Yahoo, Amazon has a minimalist search engine, but it works just how you'd hope: multiple word searches are always interpreted as "AND", so history audio book returns the matches for history AND audio AND book. The special search characters '+' and '-' are ignored, so don't try to use them here.
It's not documented on their site, but Auctions.com lets you specify exactly how you want your keywords connected by using either "AND" or "OR" between them. Compare the difference between Mickey Mouse Beanie and Mickey AND Mouse AND Beanie. Be careful with the OR, however, because it can produce lots of unexpected results: Mickey AND Mouse AND Beanie or Lunchbox produces a list of all Mickey AND Mouse AND Beanie matches and all Lunchboxes, whether or not they have Mickey on them!
Be prepared for frustration with the uBid search system. All multi-word searches have an implicit OR between them, so your search for Pentium III will also match Pentium II computers. Our recommendation: use single-word searches on uBid.
OnSale supports exactly the same notations as Yahoo Auctions, with the difference being that the default search is always an OR search (which causes lots of frustration for iTrack users, so double check you aren't encountering this problem). An example of a search that'll work quite differently to what you expect is Compaq video card, which produces lots of results because it actually searches for Compaq OR video OR card.
Narrow your searches by quoting phrases or using the '+' or '-' notation to force the inclusion or exclusion of specific words. A better way to find that Compaq video card would be to use +Compaq +"video card.
Alas, no. In fact, uBid and Onsale by Auction are both going to cause you frustration, because they'll automatically slip an 'OR' in, so the actual results you'd receive are from 'mikasa OR dishes'; you'll match non-Mikasa dishes and think something is haywire.
The best way to avoid this sort of confusion is to spend a few minutes testing out your searches on the different auction sites before you ask iTrack to watch them for you.