You Can Get Much Better Search Results on Amazon
Over the years, Amazon’s influence on online retail has grown and grown, meaning that you can purchase a staggering number of products from its digital storefront. Search for any popular gadget, such as “phone” or “tablet,” and your results will almost certainly be in the thousands.
Now, having to sift through over a thousand different options can really slow down your online shopping, and many of the matches you get may not be the best quality. Nowadays, everyone and everyone is selling their products through Amazon, and it is not always easy to choose something good among everything else.
However, there are some search techniques you can use to improve the situation, narrow down your results, and eliminate a lot of products you don’t want or need. We can help you reduce the time you spend searching on Amazon and make sure you get a better deal on the other end.
Search and sort
Instead of just going straight to the search box at the top of Amazon’s website, it’s a good idea to click the “All” button to the left of the box and select the product category that you’re really interested in – enter your terms, hit Enter , and you’ll already have a more relevant one set of results than if you searched the entire site.
Next come the keywords themselves. As far as I can tell from my own testing, you can’t use Google-style search modifiers that will include or exclude certain words – at least not reliably. However, taking a more detailed approach to what you’re looking for can sometimes lead to better results.
For example, if you’re looking for a specific brand of phone, include that in your search. Any specifications you specify – such as storage capacity or waterproof rating – can also be included to narrow down your results. It’s not an exact science and it doesn’t always work perfectly, but it can make a significant difference.
When the results appear on the screen, turn your attention to the small but important drop-down menu button in the top right corner: By default, it will say Sort by: Favorites , but you can change it to sort the results in a different way. Using this menu, you can get the most expensive, cheapest, most popular, best selling or newest items at the top of the results.
Another alternative search idea to try is to run a regular Google search with “site:amazon.com” appended to the end. You don’t get all the features of Amazon search with this method (like the ability to sort by price), but it can be useful in choosing products that more closely match your keywords, especially if you have a very specific query. search in your mind.
Applying filters
When you launch a search on Amazon, it’s tempting to immediately start scrolling through all the results you see on the screen, but you shouldn’t do anything until you check the filters on the left side of the screen. These will vary depending on the type of item you’re looking for, but there will likely be a whole bunch of them.
Some of the most useful are filtering by four- or five-star customer ratings, filtering by high and low prices, and filtering by products that arrived in the last 30 or 90 days. If you’re a Prime member, you can also select All Prime to see results eligible for Prime shipping (this also seems to exclude many sponsored results).
These filters can be very specific if you are looking for something specific. In the case of smartphones, you can sort them by display size, battery capacity, phone camera resolution, storage capacity, and even battery size. You can very quickly eliminate search results that don’t particularly interest you.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for cleaning wipes, you’ll get filters that cover fabric shapes, sizes, the material they’re made from, and the features they offer, from antimicrobial to lightweight. To some extent, the effectiveness of these filters depends on how well sellers label their product, but in most cases, you’ll want to buy from sellers who have taken the time to fill out this information.
Finding the filters and sort order that work best for you may take a little trial and error, but some filters—such as those that place restrictions on price levels—will be useful in most cases. You’ll find that you can get to the checkout page faster and have a better item in your cart.