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PUBLIC MARKS from access2 with tags amazon & "constrained search"

11 September 2009 09:15

Amazon - Constrained Search vs. Random Results

The way to find needles in the immense haystack of Amazon.com is through constrained search. Amazon's search function, like most others, claims to use a logical AND operator on keywords. That is search results for "Amazon Warriors," for example, should contain both "Amazon" AND "Warriors." In fact, you will find that, all things being equal -- "Amazon" AND "Warriors" results will appear higher than "Amazon" OR "Warriors" results. You need to "drill down" through the thousands of Amazon Categories to find the results that meet your criteria. I could go on and on (there really are thousands of categories) but I think this small sample will illustrate how different your results can be for a single search term