3 ms·
If I search on many shopping sites, the more specifics I give, the broader the results become. It's as if every term gets translated down to a sql statement wh
by didgetmaster 2y ago
If I search on many shopping sites, the more specifics I give, the broader the results become.
It's as if every term gets translated down to a sql statement where each part of the query statement is a bunch of OR clauses instead of AND clauses.
- daemonologist 2y agoThat's probably more or less what's happening. If the site is doing full-text search, and there are no exact matches, adding more terms is going to generate more and more partial matches. Some kind of re-ranker might be able to make sense of them but those are difficult to get good results out of, probably rarely employed by a run-of-the-mill commerce site, and might be drowned out by competing objectives (sponsored results, ranking by likelihood of purchase, etc.)
- m463 2y agoThis is so ridiculous and so true. it's even worse because the searches and even sidebar checkboxes don't let you filter OUT things. "dishwasher -smart" "lawnmower without wifi" It reminds me of the article about supermarkets who periodically rearrange the entire store to bump sales (to the distress of customers)