BizBuySell and BizQuest searching best practices…

(For those not aware, BizBuySell and BizQuest are owned by the same company.) I realize the best deals are going to come off-market or directly from brokers, but I believe these sites have their place in ETA searching; however, their search functionality is both poor and broken. So, how are you processing their listings? Here is how each site’s search and saved searches are poorly presented and/or broken: BizBuySell Search results on site are not presented in chronological order (i.e., by newest or oldest). Their order is heavily based on paid placement. I had this confirmed by an employee of BizBuySell. The result is you can’t go to the site every day to scroll through the latest listings. Saved search Instant Alerts do not go out instantly. According to a different employee, they are sent when a lister pays a fee to push them instantly; otherwise, your saved searches are congregated and sent in a single daily, weekly, or monthly email. BizQuest Search results on site can be sorted by age, unlike BizBuySell, but the newest to oldest sort order doesn’t match my saved search email alert for the same search. That is, the saved search email alert will have 5 businesses, and each of those are on page 1 of the site’s search results, but they are spread throughout the list, i.e., there are many listings between them. Are the listings between them paid placements? The result is the same as BizBuySell; you can’t go to the site every day and scroll through the latest listings. Saved search Instant Alerts do work; however, and this is where it gets very annoying, a meaningful percentage of instant alert listings are not 1) ever a part of the daily summary report and 2) do not show up in search results one site (but are active listings if you click through on the email)! Saved search daily summary emails do not function properly. Examples: 1. Every saved search creates a daily summary, and every one of those individual emails says they are showing listings 1 of X of 75. It’s always 75. I have searches that only have 16 results for the last 30 days, but the daily email summary says “of 75.” 2. A summary email never shows more than 5 new listings, but the heading will say there are X new listings (ex. “BizQuest Search Agent found 23 new listings for you to check out.”); however, clicking the multiple links in the email takes you to a login page that redirects to an error. You never can see a list of the 23 new listings. 3. Summary emails show listings not I never got instant alerts for. I’ve spoken to an employee at BizQuest who confirms their daily email summary is broken. I’m sorry for the long documentation of problems, but I wanted to document the depth of how these sites can’t easily be used. I’m hoping someone has a more productive way. P.S. BizBen’s search results and saved searches have been broken since they updated their site last month.