[javanix]

The end result of all this behind-the-scenes software? Fast, accurate search results that help you find what you want.

Has Bezos ever actually used Amazon's search functionality?

I know it isn't the easiest problem in the world to solve, but their search is by far the worst of any of the major shopping sites that I use on a regular basis.

[pkteison]

Specific examples? It seems pretty good to me. Which shopping site has a better search, and what makes it better?

Exact keyword match is obviously fine. "harry potter and the sorcerer's stone" gives me various options for buying that book and a bunch of other harry potter related books, and i can sort by some useful options like reviews or bestselling.

Harder problems, Google shopping vs amazon: Misspellings: Hairy Potter - Amazon suggests 'did you mean Harry Potter?', but does not initially put that book in front of me. When I check again later they are now providing a second list, "Results for "harry potter" (corrected from "hairy potter")"

Google shopping shows me the Did you Mean question, search results are the lego sets and one movie.

Concepts/descriptions instead of exact thing: "Boy Wizard Series" - both fail to suggest harry potter to me, but they do start with "Harry, a History" which might be enough to jog my memory. Still, no real points here, but this is a hard problem, and I don't know any shopping site that does it well. Even Google's regular web search is not fantastic at this, hitting mostly news articles and not reading my mind and popping out with "I bet you want to see information about Harry Potter..."

So where's the trouble?

[Splines]

In particular, searches for computer equipment is generally frustrating. I've also seen sorts result in a large number of irrelevant outdated used items getting filtered to the top.[1]

I'm willing to cut them slack since it's good enough, but look at Newegg to see how it should be done. It's not a completely fair comparison (since Newegg specializes in this), but they do it so much better.[2]

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_i_0?rh=k%3A16gb+sd...

[2] http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&#3...

[pkteison]

Thanks, great example. It looks like they don't account for the importance of certain terms in tech searches well enough. Like they're far too willing to throw away the "16gb" part of "16gb sdhc" when sorting by price, and sorting by relevance shows you expensive stuff, so there is no good way to say "show me cheap stuff but I'm not kidding about the 16gb part".

[nitfol]

Also note that sorting by price doesn't actually sort correctly. In this search, a $6.99 card comes before a $5.99 card (both with free super-saver shipping). This is so broken (and has been for so long) that I almost think it must be intentional somehow.

[metageek]

I agree that it's mostly pretty good, but here's one flaw that always annoys me: when I tell it I want something under $50, and I only want stuff sold by Amazon, they'll include an item even if Amazon's price is $60, as long as at least one seller has it for under $50.

[hga]

You can say that again. By far the worst; quite frequently I have to make several tries and occasionally resort to Google. I used to play with this technology in the early-mid '90s when it was a document imagine adjunct and I'm truly impressed by how bad it is.

I would be very surprised if they were not losing a significant amount of business from this deficit, especially outside of the well cataloged area of books.

[neuroelectronic]

There is probably over a million products on Amazon. Is there any store in the world that offers a bigger selection? The only problem I have with the search is that they need something more NewEgg-like for searching for computer stuff.

[ZoFreX]

A million is really not a big number, especially in the context of a distributed database system.

[frouaix]

You're off by two orders of magnitude.

[neuroelectronic]

So you're saying I'm right?