Re: OT: Search tricks?

On Wed, 21 Aug 2024 12:57:34 -0700, Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

Is there some secret handshake to coerce *etail* sites to pay closer attention
to your search criteria?  It seems like they produce results that match ANY
of your terms instead of ALL.  So, you scroll through page after page of
"no, not that".  Likely because they hope you will "settle" for something else
they are offering -- instead of abandoning the site in favor of another
vendor.

Exactly.

My current strategy is to specify only and exactly what I know to be
a faithful description of the item (e.g., by reading it off the package!)
and, look through the results until I encounter the first item that
doesn't match all of my search terms -- figuring anything after this is
just wishful thinking on their part.
>
Has anyone else found a better scheme?  Quoting arguments?  etc.

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