Lately, it’s been harder than ever to find quality items on Amazon. Between no-name brands, resellers, and questionable reviews, Amazon is no longer the go-to place for shopping as it once was. But you can still find what you need with some search magic.
Why Amazon Search Is Terrible
You may have realized that when you search for Amazon products, a significant percentage of the items that appear are not relevant to your search. If you’re wondering why that is, the short answer is this: those listings are mostly ads.
According to an article published by the Washington Post in 2021, there are an average of nine sponsored listings on the first page of Amazon search results. That means a large number of advertisers are paying to get their products in front of your eyes — even if those products aren’t what you’re looking for.
The problem is: Amazon listings are rarely identified as ads. Instead, it’s assumed that these results are unbiased or merit-based. Unfortunately, this has the consequence that Amazon searches have gotten even worse as a result.
Use Advanced Search
The first step in this battle is to use Amazon’s own advanced search function to narrow down the products you want to buy. This allows you to use more specific criteria than a regular search, which means you have an even better chance of finding the product you want.
Although it’s not available for every product category, when you find a product that allows advanced search, it’s a helpful way to narrow down a large list of irrelevant search results.
Narrow Your Searches Using Modifiers
Whenever you search for a product on Amazon, you may notice that a sidebar appears on the left side of your screen. If you’re on mobile, there’s a button below the search bar that allows access. This sidebar lets you eliminate certain aspects of your search. For example, a search for “cat food” may result in 3000 products. But selecting the brand “Friskies” using the sidebar bumps that number up to about 250.
Unlike the advanced search, the sidebar can be used with almost any product. You just have to add the extra step of using it with each search.
Use additional search bar operators
Adding quotation marks around your search terms results in an exact match for those terms. So, searching for “Friskies cat food” will give you a few more specific options than searching without quotation marks.
The minus sign and a word exclude specific terms from your search (“Friskies -for example”). I’ve found that you can stack these terms by using more than one word. But it seems that after about three, the search bar starts to ignore them.
Asterisk allows wildcard input. If you want items related to printing, for example, you can use “print*” to display results for printing, printers, printer paper, etc.
Both the capitalized “AND” and “OR” operators will let you add multiple different search terms. Searching for “cookware AND bakeware” will show you items that fall into both categories.
In contrast, “cookware OR bakeware” will give you items that are labeled as either cookware or bakeware.
It should also be noted that these operators aren’t perfect, so you may still get some ads. However, I’ve found that using them regularly gives me better results than searching without them.
Sort Amazon Reviews Chronologically
If you’re like me, you probably rely on reviews to help determine if a product is worth buying. The problem with reviews on Amazon is that you can’t always trust product recommendations. Often, companies offer free products or discount coupons to entice you to leave a positive review.
Additionally, some companies put time limits on discounts so that reviewers only get free stuff if they post shortly after purchase. However, if someone hasn’t spent enough time with a product, it’s hard to know the overall quality of the item.
