Auction vendor eBay experienced a significant system failure on Saturday that resulted in search attempts generating few or no results.

The service outage lasted all of Saturday, and although eBay claims the problems were corrected by Saturday night, many users continued to report issues on Sunday.

The auction site has released a statement which explains the situation:

“eBay restored search functionality to eBay.com overnight Saturday after a technical issue resulted in searches returning either limited or no results throughout the day. The unanticipated technical issue resulted from a surge in live listings as sellers ramp up for the holiday season. eBay currently has more than 200 million live listings, 33 percent more than at this time a year ago. The company said the technical issue, once identified, was easily fixed and was implemented across the site’s servers throughout Saturday afternoon and evening.”

eBay went on to say that its servers should now be equipped to handle the load of the 2009 holiday season.

Image credits