On Tuesday, eBay research tool developer Terapeak announced the launch of several new tools that it claims will make studying eBay's hottest products and sales data easier and faster.

"Terapeak has revamped its underlying architecture," said Andrew Sukow, Chief Technology Officer. "The new changes mean that users will notice faster search times, and have more control over the way that information is delivered to them."

Some examples of this new technology include the ability to use more search "modifiers" such as "-" keywords and category filtering. This enables users to find and filter results more easily and with greater precision. Terapeak claims search times are also more efficient and contain larger sets of data. Keyword searches are available for the past 90 days, up from 60, while category trends can be viewed for the past year.

Another feature is the ability to export search results in excel format. Users can build their own databases on the items that they are most interested in following.

"This feature has a lot of our customers very excited" said Chris Smith, Business Development Director at Terapeak. "Users can now create a custom research history and better understand the markets they compete in."

Customers are also able to now save their searches, and even have the results e-mailed to them on a regular schedule. Terapeak has also made many cosmetic upgrades to its web site.

Its new interface is more graphical and the help system is noticeably more robust. Graphing technology has been upgraded, with users given more control over how trends are displayed. Graphs make use of multiple colors and trending lines to display information on several items or categories at once. An improved area for researching listing feature efficiency and category comparison tool are some of the other upgrades.

Terapeak offers two versions of its service: Terapeak Lite, for $9.95 per month and Terapeak Research Complete, for $16.95 per month. For full descriptions of the features of each service, visit www.terapeak.com.