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Re:Amazon launches Part Finder, using technology acquired fr... by tcmb on Saturday September 15, 2018 @05:20AM (#17993624)
What you're describing is called "faceted search". For that to work properly, two things are needed: The product data needs to be structured properly, so that you can actually find the attributes on each product variant. This has to be consistent for every vendor, of which Amazon has many, of course. So they would have to define a common data format for every vendor selling M8 bolts, or convert their formats into a common standard, making sure all the attributes are there and can be located in the imports.

And second, someone needs to sit down and define which product attributes should be represented as facets for the search and displayed accordingly in the UI, and what input elements should be used to select the range of parameters (checkboxes, sliders, text box etc). This is not easily solved by algorithms which have no knowledge of the semantics of the attributes..

I suppose that a general-purpose, consumer-oriented site like Amazon doesn't put enough priority on something like M8 steel bolts. The facets for, say, computer monitors are much better, for example.

Re:Amazon launches Part Finder, using technology acquired fr... by inferiorhuman on Saturday September 15, 2018 @10:47PM (#17997064)
> I suppose that a general-purpose, consumer-oriented site like Amazon doesn't put enough priority on something like M8 steel bolts. The facets for, say, computer monitors are much better, for example.

It goes beyond that. I was searching for a water pump this evening and hit Amazon out of instinct. Despite only returning 18 results across god-knows-how-many categories, there was no option to filter by manufacturer. Amazon simply doesn't get search.

Re:Amazon launches Part Finder, using technology acquired fr... by snaky on Saturday September 15, 2018 @08:57AM (#17994109)
For, say, computer monitors Amazon has a size, resolution, 'tecnology' (LED, OLED or LCD) and the 'brand' parameters for filtering. That's it.