Last week our customer service team received an email from a new member who asked about how to search Alibaba.com. To answer this question, I am going to take you through a few simple steps that will help you to use Alibaba.com’s search tools with ease.

Searching Alibaba.com is easy. All you have to do is:

1. Enter the keyword(s) that best describe the item that you are looking for in the input box.
2. Decide whether you wish to search for selling leads, buying leads, products or companies and make your choice using the drop down selection menu.
3. Click on the Search button to submit your search.

Try to be specific in your choice of keyword(s) to help the search engine find the items that you want. If you are not specific in your choice of keywords, your results may contain a lot of similar but unwanted listings.

There may be times when you want to search within your search results. The search bar above your search results contains a checkbox that makes this very simple to do. To search within your search results:

1. Enter a keyword(s) into the input box.
2. Click on the check box labeled within results to select it.
3. Click on the Search button to submit your search.

Related searches
If you are searching with a very popular keyword, your search results will also feature a list of related search items that you can use to do a related search. When available, you can perform a related search by clicking on one of the blue hyperlinks next to heading Related Searches .

To perform a related search:

Select one of the blue hyperlinks next to heading Related Searches. This will start a second search using the related search term that you selected.

If searching within your results or performing a related search still doesn’t give you the information you are looking for, you can also refine your search results by Category, Date and Region .

To refine search results by category, click on one of the blue hyperlinks under the heading Refine search by category.

When searching for Trade Leads (Buy/Sell), you can refine your search results by date. To do this choose one of the available time periods (Today's new - Last 6 months) from the drop down selection box labeled Refine search by date.

To refine your results by region, choose one of the available regions in the drop down selection box labelled by region.

Buying leads: Invitations to sellers to contact buyers with appropriate product and price offerings.
Keyword: A word or phrase used when searching for information in search engines.
Selling leads: Invitations to buyers to contact sellers with appropriate product and price requirements.

I hope that you have found this tutorial helpful. I would like to hear from you! If you would like to comment on this tutorial or make a request for a future tutorial, please feel free to send me a message using the feedback box below.

Milton