Re: OT: Search tricks?

On Wed, 21 Aug 2024 15:26:35 -0700, Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 8/21/2024 1:10 PM, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 8/21/24 21:57, Don Y 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.  [...]

Exactly.

I tried that. They'll take the intended logical operator as yet
another search term and show you *more* undesired results.

You have to phrase and punctuate it correctly.

I wasn't thinking of an explicit *operator* as much as careful grouping.
E.g.,
    "stainless steel" "2 gang" "wall plate"
to match all variants of those *three* phrases -- and NOT:
   wall plate
OR two gang
OR stainless steel
(OR stainless OR steel OR two OR gang OR wall OR plate...)
>

Idiots.

>
They obviously think more folks will spend extra time trying to settle
for something than moving on.

And they're probably right, because if it didn't usually lead to a
sale, they would stop trying to deflect people with decoys.  I'm sure
they have tested all manner of approaches, and the present one won.

Joe Gwinn