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I would never search for something this way. If I wanted to find a 4WD car, I wouldn't search for "cars without 2WD." Likewise, here, I would search for solid-

I would never search for something this way. If I wanted to find a 4WD car, I wouldn't search for "cars without 2WD." Likewise, here, I would search for solid-colored shirts. And these services are limited to the content/terminology utilized by the cataloged sites/products. If I am selling a "black shirt" or a "solid black shirt," it is not google's job to catalog it as a "shirt without stripes," unless I advertise it as a "black shirt without stripes." I would use natural language to test a services' NLP ability.

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jorvi 6y ago
But it what if you just hate shirts with stripes but do like polka dots or other patterns? You can do a fancy advanced search query with OR and EXCLUDE tricks but that is not what this post is trying to emphasize.
- shanecleveland 6y ago
  Let's assume the point of the OP is that Google sucks at understanding this search that most people would logically understand. But let's also logically assume that most content on the web is telling the visitor what their page or product is, not what it is not. I would expect a shirt to be advertised and described as what it is: “black shirt” not “shirt without stripes.” So if a content creator does not include the exact term “without stripes” in the description of shirt, then you are relying on google to infer meaning on your behalf and the content creator. Now, this is relatively inconsequential for a shirt and perhaps not well representative, as a fashion-related searches a different than many searches. If I search for “news without coronavirus,” should I expect only articles that do not refer to coronavirus? I wouldn’t. If I was allergic to peanuts and I searched for “food without peanuts,” I would expect results from content creators and sellers of products who took care to include the term “without peanuts,” because they are advertising their product as safe for those with peanut allergies. I would not rely on google or amazon to make that determination for me. Both for google and individual sites, there are better options to further narrow results. If you don’t want to narrowly define your result to a specific pattern or color, the first search more broadly and then used advanced settings or filters to omit terms and/or include others.
danpalmer 6y ago
Your car example makes sense because there are pretty much only 2 options. Unfortunately people don't search for "solid shirts". At best they search for "plain shirts", but there's a lot of taste to clothing that means people often do want a shirt without stripes, but are open to patterned/plain. I think searching "shirts without stripes" is very legitimate in fashion. I say this having built a clothing search function for the company I work for, and one that does not support this sort of query.
- shanecleveland 6y ago
  So the one you built will exclude shirts with stripes if "shirts without stripes" is typed directly into a search box? Or there are secondary filters to omit and/or only show certain patterns?
  - OJFord 6y ago
    I suppose my ideal UI understands your search, and then moves what it can to (interactively modifiable, as in Amazon's sidebar) filters, keyword searching on the rest. Currently when I search Amazon and then see that some of my search terms are filter options / categories, I try to remove that from the search (which isn't always easy) in case there's more results I'm missing because they happen not to have the keywords.
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jorvi 6y ago

But it what if you just hate shirts with stripes but do like polka dots or other patterns? You can do a fancy advanced search query with OR and EXCLUDE tricks but that is not what this post is trying to emphasize.

shanecleveland 6y ago
Let's assume the point of the OP is that Google sucks at understanding this search that most people would logically understand. But let's also logically assume that most content on the web is telling the visitor what their page or product is, not what it is not. I would expect a shirt to be advertised and described as what it is: “black shirt” not “shirt without stripes.” So if a content creator does not include the exact term “without stripes” in the description of shirt, then you are relying on google to infer meaning on your behalf and the content creator. Now, this is relatively inconsequential for a shirt and perhaps not well representative, as a fashion-related searches a different than many searches. If I search for “news without coronavirus,” should I expect only articles that do not refer to coronavirus? I wouldn’t. If I was allergic to peanuts and I searched for “food without peanuts,” I would expect results from content creators and sellers of products who took care to include the term “without peanuts,” because they are advertising their product as safe for those with peanut allergies. I would not rely on google or amazon to make that determination for me. Both for google and individual sites, there are better options to further narrow results. If you don’t want to narrowly define your result to a specific pattern or color, the first search more broadly and then used advanced settings or filters to omit terms and/or include others.

danpalmer 6y ago

Your car example makes sense because there are pretty much only 2 options. Unfortunately people don't search for "solid shirts". At best they search for "plain shirts", but there's a lot of taste to clothing that means people often do want a shirt without stripes, but are open to patterned/plain. I think searching "shirts without stripes" is very legitimate in fashion. I say this having built a clothing search function for the company I work for, and one that does not support this sort of query.

shanecleveland 6y ago
So the one you built will exclude shirts with stripes if "shirts without stripes" is typed directly into a search box? Or there are secondary filters to omit and/or only show certain patterns?
- OJFord 6y ago
  I suppose my ideal UI understands your search, and then moves what it can to (interactively modifiable, as in Amazon's sidebar) filters, keyword searching on the rest. Currently when I search Amazon and then see that some of my search terms are filter options / categories, I try to remove that from the search (which isn't always easy) in case there's more results I'm missing because they happen not to have the keywords.

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