Re: OT: Search tricks?

They aren't there to help you find what you want, they are there to sell you what they get paid for.

Exactly.

The best I've come up with is to use "site:<>" (without the quotes) to qualify a google search. For instance google for "item site:etail.com". This is useful for Amazon searches, but google is also trying to sell. Used to be that a + in front of a term required it to be present, but now only quoting the term seems to work. It also used to be that a - would forbid the term; maybe an "and not" qualifier will work. Takes some fiddling.

Joe Gwinn

I miss the “advanced search” dialog.

Peak web was 2008. :(

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Exactly.

You have to phrase and punctuate it correctly.

And they're probably right, because if it didn't usually lead to a sale, they would stop trying to deflect people with decoys. I'm sure they have tested all manner of approaches, and the present one won.

Joe Gwinn

They're screwing up the search price low to high feature. You get 10 pages of 10 cent doodads that have nothing to do with what you looking for peppered with the expensive featured items. Last time at Amazon, I couldn't find the selection for best fit. It was just Featured, Low to High and High to Low.

I wonder if you can get ChatGPT or other AI to help search. I haven't played with any of them, cause I'm not sure I trust them.

Which web search engine are you using? Google, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Bing, etc:

I normally use Google for searching. However, Google became greedy about 15 years ago by inserting paid advertising into the beginning of the search results. What works best for me is to do an image search for the product of interest. Google inserts adds along the top of the first page, but hasn't butchered the rest of the image search results, yet.

Note that Google Advanced Search is still available:

I also use some of the advanced search operators built into Google Search:

Another useful search tool is a browser extension that removes the tracking information from the URL that Google (and others) find. I use ClearURLs, which is probably not the best, but I'm used to its problems:

If your problem is with the search built into an *etail* web site, you'll need to disclose the site in question. They're all different and there is no universal fix. I've noticed that providing far more products than the search should have provided is now standard procedure for most shopping sites. Maybe the first few items are within my search filter, but the rest are "closely related" items that the operators of the shopping site believe might be of interest. Despite the obvious problems resulting from flooding the buyer with unwanted product offers, sometimes the closely related product provides something of interest.

Good luck.

You didn't answer my question. Are you: [ ] searching the entire internet? [ ] searching the vendors shopping site?

I already offered a few suggestions for searching the entire internet with your choice of web search page and search options. However, I can't offer any advice on how to customize a shopping site, which is under the control of the vendor.

As for "going to pickup an item today", I don't do much of that. I usually have the vendor ship me my purchases. In general, the inventory is accurate for items that use commercial delivery services (i.e. automated warehouse). I can't say the same for store inventory, which is subject to various types of shrinkage, such as theft, mis-filing, hidden behind other items, customer return problems, packaging damage, open boxes, etc.

That's not how the search engines get paid. They get paid for the adverts they show you, not for whether you buy anything from those adverts. If the advertiser finds only a very few of his 'hits' result in sales, he will blame the advertisment or the product, not the search engine.

It's all back-to-front because it is driven from the advertising end, not from the searchers' end.

No gripe with temu. The search last supper decoration shows a first page with at least 60 canvasses, polychromed aluminium, pseudo stained glass etc with the famous biblical motive. Only one of them show apostles in a biblical scene that was not the last supper, but at least the text contained "last supper". Given that there are few Christians in China, the diversity is nothing short of astonishing. On the second page an occasional "resin crucifix wall hanger" appears, but that is not wildly off topic, after 100 some straight hits.

Order with temu?

Groetjes Albert

Some are better than others. I prefer those with filters that let you choose maker, price range and whatever parameters really matter.

Some sites own search facilities are so dire (BBC for instance) that the only way to find stuff is to go into google and use +BBC together with

Amazon seems to have got worse in this respect. Abe books better...

In quotes preceded by + or - to include or exclude terms works on some.

Last year I used ChatGPT to give me a number for a D-Squared PAK fast recovery diode. It did and I ordered some.

ChatGPT also warned me that its training data was not up to date which I appreciated.

This is where I have to be very careful with my search terms just to get that search engine to understand my question. That is where AI comes in handy. It can do more with my question some times.

Maybe sites like Octopart will eventually incorporate some AI in its searches ?

boB

Ok. That means you know the maker and model of the item that you intend to buy. In other words, you're not searching for a item to buy, but instead are searching for a vendor that has that item in stock.

Most online shopping sites have filters to help you select products, availability, shipping preferences, etc. Pick a likely online vendor, find the item that you intend to buy, and see what they have to offer in terms of availability, shipping and nearby stores that might have stock. For example, if I find something on Harbor Freight, and the item is not in stock, I can select another store that has it in stock.

Or, you could spend a few minutes checking some likely vendors who claim to have it in stock or claim to have expedited service. Again, because of shrinkage in retail stores, stock count from an automated warehouse is far more accurate than stock count from a retail store. Note that most stores do a physical inventory count once per year for the benefit of the auditors, not the customers.

If you bought in large quantities from a wholesale warehouse, you would probably ask for regular inventory counts of the items you routinely purchase. With such a report, you can order "from inventory" and have a good chance of actually getting what you order. However, in the quantities we buy for our own use, none of us would qualify for such a service.

Yep. Good, fast delivery, cheap. Pick any two.

Please re-read what I wrote. I had assumed that you know the maker and model number of the item you want to purchase because you ordered something and Amazon allegedly botched your order. However, the example you provided was essentially starting your search from scratch. You had a maker (Leviton) and a part number. Why didn't you just search for that?

When you searched for a "leviton two gang stainless steel wall plate", you didn't continue narrow the search by the type of outlet it fits (decorative switch, toggle switch, duplex wall outlet). When I run your search for:

Or, go to the Leviton web page, and find the exact item you want to order.

The bad news is that Amazon has intentionally removed the "not" operator (a minus sign) from search. I suspect this was to prevent users from removing "featured" items (items you don't want but for which Amazon gets paid to shove in your face). I used to be able to trick Amazon search by using "advanced search" or by searching Amazon from Google Search, but both of those no longer work. Sorry.

Ebay is somewhat better for searching because it has search operators:

I'm out of time. Good luck (again).