How search and filters work

The marketplace surfaces every published listing on Haubot, regardless of vertical. Filters narrow it down. The trick is that filters adapt to what you're looking for — searching for cranes shows a different parameter set than searching for marine engines.

The search bar

Type a keyword, press Enter. The search is matched against the listing's title, description, equipment brand and model. Multiple words are AND-matched — so caterpillar 320 returns listings that mention both caterpillar and 320 somewhere, not just one or the other.

Search is case-insensitive and matches partial words. Typing bull matches bulldozer, bullet hose and any listing where those characters appear in sequence inside a token. There's no fuzzy matching — excavtor won't match excavator, you have to spell things correctly.

If you don't type anything in the search bar, the marketplace shows every published listing, ordered as described below in Ranking.

Filters

Filters live in a panel on the side of the search results. They're applied on top of any keyword search. The standard filter set is:

• Listing type — For sale, Auction (separate sub-modes), Rent, Wanted.
• Category — Construction, Transport, Marine, Aviation, Energy, Forestry, Industrial, Oil & gas, Defence.
• Brand & model — When you pick a brand the model dropdown narrows to that brand only.
• Year — both Year manufactured from and to fields.
• Condition — New, Used, Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor.
• Price range — in your selected currency. We convert listing prices into your currency for filtering, so a price filter of "USD 50 000–80 000" finds listings priced in USD, EUR, AED or anything else, as long as they fall in that USD-converted range.
• Country / region — for buyers who care about shipping or paperwork.

Per-category parameters

Once you pick a category, additional filters appear that are specific to that category. For construction equipment that's operating hours, fuel type and attachment compatibility. For marine equipment it's engine hours, hull material and length overall. For aviation it's airframe hours, engine TBO and certification status.

We don't pretend a drilling rig and a forklift have the same useful filters. Each category has its own parameter schema; only the parameters that exist for the active category show up.

Currency handling

Every listing has a seller's currency (the currency the seller priced it in) and a USD-equivalent updated daily from FX rates. When you set a price filter, we use the USD-equivalent for the comparison; the visible price stays in the seller's currency unless you've switched display.

You can change your display currency in the marketplace header. The price you see on each listing card and detail page converts on the fly. This affects display only — the seller still publishes the canonical price in their own currency.

Ranking

When there's a search query, results are ranked by:

1. Relevance — listings whose title contains the keyword rank higher than ones that only mention it in the description.
2. Recency — newer listings get a small boost. We don't want stale listings clogging the top of every search.
3. Verification & trust signals — listings with verified seller profiles, complete parameters and snapshot-locked documents rank above thin listings.
4. Engagement — listings with strong recent view counts get a small boost (no manipulation: this signal is dampened to prevent gaming).

When there's no search query, the default ordering is recency-weighted with the same trust signals. Auctions ending soon are surfaced separately in their own panel rather than mixed in.

Saved searches

Logged-in users can save a filter combination and get notified when new listings match. The save button is at the top of the filter panel; saved searches live in your dashboard.

Wanted listings

A Wanted listing is the inverse: a buyer publishes "I'm looking for X". Sellers browsing the marketplace see Wanted listings filtered by category and can reach out. From a search perspective Wanted is a normal listing type — appears in results when the type filter includes it.

What search doesn't do (yet)

• No natural-language search. "Excavator under 50k near Hamburg" doesn't parse as a structured query — set the filters yourself.
• No saved-search alerts by SMS — email only at the moment.
• No search-result snippets — the marketplace shows full cards, not search excerpts.

If a search should work but doesn't, support@haubot is the place — we collect those and use them to prioritise the next round of search work.