Search engine weirdness
Can anyone explain to me how amazons search engine ‘works’ ? It just seems ridiculous. I just entered the name and author of a book and hit ‘go’ My actual book was eleventh on the list of ‘hits’. except the others were not hits at all. I dont think there was single word of either the title or the author in any of the first ten books it showed me. So why does it do this ? I sell books on Amazon, I have never bought one, yet the algorythm is trying to sell me a bunch of completely random titles. It is obviously not accidental, it would be quite simple just to show me the book I am actually looking for, so just what is the point ? And the more obscure the book I am searching for, the more spam Amazon shows me first. Its not only annoying, its counter productive, sometimes the actual book is even on the next page of results.
15 replies
Seller_BS5lg2keRs2QO
Easy. The algorithm is smarter than the buyer so always knows what to show regardless of the search terms.
Seller_DROodOAYHftnc
In one word “No” !
As a long-time bookseller on here (over 14 years) and there are others even longer, it is a complete mystery. Lots of theories but this is Amazon who have their own unique way of doing things, and algorithms !!!
It has been like this for a long time, but seems to be worse over the past few years with so many sellers who are dropshippers, whose rogue duplicate listings come up above the correct listing for the book.
As you say, many of the results returned don’t even have a single matching word in either title or author. Much of it is driven by popularity, and the number of searches that have been made for items.
The trouble is, if like me, you have a large stock of single, one-off titles that are not searched for often but are desirable by the the right person, they often cannot find it, as if it doesn’t come up in the top few results, potential buyers will assume it is not available.
Their search engine is absolutely useless for us - how come other sites can return exactly what you are looking for ?
Amazon likes to think they know what you might want to buy instead !
Seller_mBENc0rmDmw5W
If you find out how it works let us know, please.
It is a case of “Nobody knows” … 
Seller_LKjg1QRrO36Yq
No one really knows.
What strikes me as a particularly weird development is that if you scan a barcode using the Amazon app it now shows you the same sort of non-matches that ordinary text search gives.
Previously, it would give you an exact match to whatever barcode you scanned, it now throws up dozens of items that are often only slightly related to the item to which the barcode is attached.
I’m mainly talking about books, CDs and DVDs, all of which should be tied firmly to the barcode.
There have been countless threads regarding Amazon search down the years.
A small selection here:
Major changes to Amazon search engine?
Amazon's search engine substitutes "Horovitz" for "Horowitz" (wrongly)
Something new since CV19 - as well as used copies now not showing at all by default in initial search results, ‘See all formats and editions’ is now even more hidden from view behind yet another expansion button
Seller_x4sIiMyhtvyfE
What really annoys me is when I know what author I want and Amazon in their wisdom change the spelling or word to something I do not want and refuse to search for my word.
Seller_LKjg1QRrO36Yq
More search weirdness today - category search for several categories is forcibly returning results in ‘all’ and won’t let me narrow it down to a specific category.
It simply reverts to ‘all’.
Seller_LKjg1QRrO36Yq
I thought it might be a temporary glitch but it’s still continuing today for me.
I first noticed it when searching key words in ‘PC & Video Games’ but it appears to be affecting most categories.
[It doesn’t seem to be an issue with books, DVD or CD search oddly enough]
I tried a few sample searches in ‘beauty’, ‘tools’, ‘garden’, and several keywords automatically cause the category to revert to ‘all’, even when there are matches.
Eg, a search for ‘star’ in ‘toys and games’ and ‘PC’ and in ‘software’ should find lots of matches in those categories but it doesn’t.
Weird.
