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by athenot
2294 days ago
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Yes! Amazon's search has been driving me crazy but it went from bad (loose interpretation of what I typed with a whole bunch of irrelevant stuff) to worse (adding more sponsored results, i.e. even less what I want). Their recommendation engine for related prducts used to be nice but that's been replaced by sponsored products which lowers the quality. Now, the only way I use Amazon's search is when I have a SKU or part number and type it in directly. But I also do that in Google and often find the same thing elsewhere at similar or less cost (including shipping, though to be fair it may take a day or 2 longer). eBay's search is still one of the best for me, in that it respects the keywords I put in and allows for extended query syntax to really hunt something down (which then can be turned into a saved search). One of the most creative things I found on eBay was tool rental. I needed a tool to replace the bearings on my washing machine, and a seller was selling one explicitely as a rental: tool was charged about $120, with $35 shipping. When done, sent it back for a refund. The "shipping" included the rental fee and shipping both ways. |
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The one that they're missing that I really wish they would include is "multi item BIN" formats. People will list a $1 item so that they're the first result that comes up, and then the item you're looking for is high priced. The prices are in fact so high that I go out of my way to try and exclude these items using "not" keywords, setting a minimum price, and filtering to US only, which collectively get most of them.
I have a lot of saved searches for "rare" items that only get listed infrequently, or for items that I'm waiting to come down in price.
The contrast between the way those two sites handle their search is stark.