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788 points jsheard | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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jameslk ◴[] No.42892519[source]
If I start fucking adding swear words to all my fucking search queries, how the fuck will the stupid ass search engine know that I did not want it to use that shit as one of my keywords and give me back a whole lot of fucked up shit?
replies(9): >>42892578 #>>42893095 #>>42893107 #>>42893305 #>>42893306 #>>42893500 #>>42893701 #>>42894251 #>>42895971 #
edflsafoiewq ◴[] No.42893107[source]
It's not like it doesn't freely ignore any unquoted word whenever it feels like it.
replies(4): >>42893141 #>>42893316 #>>42893453 #>>42893486 #
bmurphy1976 ◴[] No.42893141[source]
The quoted words search barely works these days anyway.
replies(5): >>42893236 #>>42893264 #>>42893479 #>>42893609 #>>42895319 #
roskelld ◴[] No.42893264[source]
This bugs me so much. It happens constantly. A few days back I searched for a person's name, put it in quotes and I got results with celebrity with somewhat similar name. Zero hits on the person I searched for on the front page. I had to add specifics to the query such as job title to find them.
replies(2): >>42893344 #>>42893586 #
mrandish ◴[] No.42893586[source]
Amazon Search is now nearly completely useless for any kind of targeted search. Heaven help you if you're looking for a product without a certain attribute most other products like it all have. There is quite literally no way to filter results against one attribute. Even if Amazon has that product, you won't be able to find it.

I eventually just scripted a separate search engine query that's site specific to Amazon. It works but not as well as it could because it doesn't have access to my purchase history or Amazon's hidden granular category taxonomy.

replies(3): >>42893784 #>>42895192 #>>42895561 #
1. kartoffelsaft ◴[] No.42895561{5}[source]
It really feels as though Amazon's greatest fear is the idea that you might search for something and get no results. If we show you BS you explicitly said you aren't looking for then we're giving up the opportunity of tricking you into buying it anyways.

A bit ago I was searching for toothpaste that doesn't have mint in it. This is already a pain at a brick retailer, but I figured Amazon's huge product variety would help. Turns out their search is actively malicious to negative terms because otherwise I could buy just the one thing and be done with my shopping.

I should probably set up a similar homebrew search to get around this. Purchase history is far less important to me because I don't buy much from Amazon.