How to search by ad number?

Formerly, if I had an historic ad number, I could easily plug it into a standard format to display the old ad (something like: https://www.astromart.com/classifieds/secretsauce/456789).  Now the URL for each ad has the name, and without those names archived I'm unable to access the old ads I have in my collector's database.

Is there a way for me to find ads by the ad mumber?

 

Originally Posted by Bennet Langlotz

Formerly, if I had an historic ad number, I could easily plug it into a standard format to display the old ad (something like: https://www.astromart.com/classifieds/secretsauce/456789).  Now the URL for each ad has the name, and without those names archived I'm unable to access the old ads I have in my collector's database.

Is there a way for me to find ads by the ad mumber?

 

Click on "Search Classifieds", type in the ad # in the search field and hit the search button.....in that respect nothing has changed.

That doesn't work.  I get either "no classifieds" or the wrong ad.

960512 for example should the be a Questar Seven I bought last year.

162831 is a 2002 Questar ad.

Nothing works.

Originally Posted by Bennet Langlotz

That doesn't work.  I get either "no classifieds" or the wrong ad.

960512 for example should the be a Questar Seven I bought last year.

162831 is a 2002 Questar ad.

Nothing works.

If the seller has deleted the ad it wont be found...... I have tested it 3 different times with an ad from 2009, another from 2011 and one that is still active. In each case it worked fine. Both of the ad numbers you mentioned came up with "not found" which would indicate they no longer exist.

That's not to say there cant be any errors but have you perhaps looked at your feedback record to verify the ad still exists? If you know when you bought the scope it should be easy enough to find in your feedback record based on the date (assuming one of both of you left feedback).....once you find it then try to view the ad, if you cant then the seller likely deleted the ad which is not uncommon.

Update: Ahhh I just noticed one of the programmers responded with the real info.....my testing was with ads that exist in the database as it is now.....after the import. Seems to me ad numbers should have been retained on the import instead of just assigning new numbers but I guess it is what it is now......

Originally Posted by Vladimir Krsmanovic

Hi Bennet, unfortunately OLD ID's will not work since old classifieds have been moved to the new database and as such they have assigned with new ids.

Old URL schema with ID's is not search engine friendly. Google doesn't like URL's like that and it's penalizing them, so new URL's are optimized for search engines as they contain the actual AD Title.

Oh dear, that's a disappointment.  But thanks for the definitive answer.

As a Questar historian I have gone through every undeleted Questar ad on AM for all these years, and cataloged each by ad number, the serial number and other notable characteristics in order to establish a good historic timeline of design changes, as well as to identify particular examples as they return to the market.

Is there by chance a map of old numbers to searchable new numbers I might use to convert my database?  Granted, I can always repeat the effort and ID the new ad number for each of my old data entries.