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.
>
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.

Which web search engine are you using?  Google, DuckDuckGo, Brave,
Bing, etc:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines>
Or, are you using the web site's server search feature to look for
products available from a specific web vendor?  I guess that might be
what you mean by an "*etail* site.

I normally use Google for searching.  However, Google became greedy
about 15 years ago by inserting paid advertising into the beginning of
the search results.  What works best for me is to do an image search
for the product of interest.  Google inserts adds along the top of the
first page, but hasn't butchered the rest of the image search results,
yet.

Note that Google Advanced Search is still available:
<https://www.google.com/advanced_search>

I also use some of the advanced search operators built into Google
Search:
<https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/>
<https://moz.com/learn/seo/search-operators>
However, some of these search operators are broken and Google shows
little interest in fixing them:
<https://searchengineland.com/advanced-google-search-operators-388355>

Another useful search tool is a browser extension that removes the
tracking information from the URL that Google (and others) find.  I
use ClearURLs, which is probably not the best, but I'm used to its
problems:
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/>
<https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clearurls/lckanjgmijmafbedllaakclkaicjfmnk?hl=en&pli=1>

If your problem is with the search built into an *etail* web site,
you'll need to disclose the site in question.  They're all different
and there is no universal fix.  I've noticed that providing far more
products than the search should have provided is now standard
procedure for most shopping sites.  Maybe the first few items are
within my search filter, but the rest are "closely related" items that
the operators of the shopping site believe might be of interest.
Despite the obvious problems resulting from flooding the buyer with
unwanted product offers, sometimes the closely related product
provides something of interest.

Good luck.
--
Jeff Liebermann                 jeffl@cruzio.com
PO Box 272      http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann      AE6KS    831-336-2558