Saved searches and alerts

Most buyers don’t find what they want on the first visit. With saved searches, they save the search they just ran, with its category, location, price range, keywords and filters, and your site emails them as soon as a new listing matches. They come back when there’s something worth seeing, and sellers get more replies.

Saved searches replace the older category alerts of the Subscribe widget (see Listing alerts and notifications), and do much more: any search can become an alert, and buyers choose how often they hear from you.

Switch saved searches on

Newer sites have saved searches on already. To check, or to switch them on:

Go to Settings › General.
In Search, switch on Saved searches.
Click Save changes in the bar at the bottom.

Existing subscribers aren’t lost: their old category alerts are moved over to saved searches automatically, a batch at a time over the next few minutes, and nobody gets the same listing twice.

How buyers save a search

The buyer searches or browses a category or location, and sets any filters they like.
On the results, they click Save this search. Visitors who aren’t signed in are asked to sign in first.

The search keeps everything on the page: category, location, keywords, price range and custom-field filters. A buyer can keep up to 20 saved searches.

Saved searches are built for the Nova theme, which has the Save this search button. Alerts work with any theme, and members reach their saved searches from the link in every alert email.

What buyers receive

When a new listing goes live and matches a saved search, the buyer gets an email with a link to it. Each buyer gets each listing only once, even if it matches several of their searches, and never for their own listings.

For each saved search the buyer picks the Alert frequency:

Frequency	What they get
Instant	An email as soon as a matching listing is published (or approved, with moderation).
Daily digest	One email a day with all the new matches.

Every alert has a Pause this alert button and a link to manage saved searches. Pausing from the email asks the buyer to confirm first.

How buyers manage their saved searches

In Nova, signed-in members find Saved searches in the menu of their account pages, in place of Subscriptions. For each search they can Rename, Pause and Resume, change the Alert frequency, or Delete it.

See what buyers are waiting for

Saved searches show demand, even for things nobody sells yet. Go to Analytics in the sidebar: the What buyers are waiting for card lists how many saved searches each category has. Use it to recruit sellers in the categories buyers want most: Recruit sellers keeps your list of them, and its What buyers are looking for card shows the searches on your site that found nothing.

Change the alert emails

Reword the emails in Email templates: saved-search-alert (instant) and saved-search-digest (daily). On a site in another language, your site adds a copy in that language the first time an alert goes out, so you can translate it.

Good to know

Listings added through a business seller’s bulk import or stock feed don’t send alerts.
Visitors can still sign up for alerts with the Subscribe widget, by email address and without an account. Their alerts only start once they confirm: they get one email (alert-confirm) with a link, and on the page it opens they click Confirm my alerts. Their alerts then become saved searches, and an account is created for the address if it doesn’t have one. A member signed in with that same address skips the email. See Listing alerts and notifications.
If you switch saved searches off again, buyers whose alerts came from the old Subscribe widget go back to the old alerts; other saved searches stop sending.

Search and filters — what buyers can search by.
Listing alerts and notifications — the older Subscribe widget and on-screen notifications.
Email digest — a regular round-up of all new listings.