First, I like what Shapeways offers. I started as a customer buying an item from a vendor. Then I successfully uploaded and had my own model printed. And now I've made it available to others. Pretty damn cool, and I think it's an exciting market!
That said, I'm glad to see the search engine is getting work because it is so hard to use for me that Shapeways becomes a last resort - only using it if I can't find things on ebay, amazon, etsy, and a myriad of miniature sites.
To elaborate, Shapeways search is an exercise in creative searching...sifting through up to dozens of pages...and you still probably never find many items that would actually be relevant.
Speaking of "Relevance", this sort option doesn't seem to work at all. Type "28mm motorcycle" and sort by Relevance. Out of almost 250 models from the first 5 page results (28 pages total!) - there are about 5-10 actual motorcycle related items. I'd guess the search is just filtering "28mm" OR "motorcycle" but even that doesn't seem to fit entirely what I see. Obviously hardly any are motorcycles and the scales, though mostly 28mm, are all over the place.
I know I can play around w/ quotes, searching titles only, etc. But the basics of searching are not effective or user friendly at all. All of the sites mentioned above, including even etsy, are easier to get appropriate results.
I hope this gets attention. Making it easier for people to find what they want will only translate to more popularity, more usage, and more sales.