Fostoria Review Times

Frequently-Asked Questions

Below is a list of the most common questions asked to our technical support staff.

If you do not see your question listed here, send an e-mail to EWA Tech Support and we will be happy to assist you.

Why am I seeing listings that appear to have nothing to do with the category I selected? For example, I chose "Pets and Pet Supplies" under the "For Sale" section but I am seeing "Garage Sale" listings.

Those listings you are seeing are "related" listings from other newspapers. Each ad contains information about its source newspaper. By default, when you search for a group of listings, the selected search radius is 20. This means that any newspapers in our system that are located within a 20-mile radius from the zip code you specified will be included in the results whose categories are "relevant" to the category you specified. Since "Pets and Pet Supplies" belong to the "For Sale" category, "Garage Sales" will be included as well since these are also considered "Items for Sale". Besides, at a garage sale, it is likely that they are selling unused pet supplies, such as cages or aquariums, for example. Assuming that your zip code is within the geographical radius of the newspaper you are searching from, if you don't want to see relevant ads, choose a smaller search radius, such as 0 or 5.

When searching for ads, how are the results displayed?

There are two possible outcomes. If you are searching by keywords, the results will be sorted by relevance, that is, those that best match the keywords you specified will appear first. However, if you do not specify keywords and supply other search criteria, such as price range, etc., the results will be sorted by the geographical region closest to the zip code you specified. For example, if the starting zip code is 45840 and the search radius is 20 miles, all newspapers within this area will appear in the results, beginning with The Courier, Findlay, Ohio since it is the only newspaper in the 45840 region.

I did a search on category "X" within 20 miles from both my city and another city near the area. When I searched from my city, the search said there were 109 ads. When I searched from the other city, the results said there were 131 ads. Should they be different or the same number?

This depends on which city's newspaper has the most ads for the category you selected. Please see "Why am I seeing listings that appear to have nothing to do with the category I selected?" for more details.