When you search for “shirt without stripes” you expect and hope to get shirts and t-shirts with stripes?

Yes. I expect to get results that contain the keywords "shirt", "stripes", and "without", but perhaps with the last term ignored. Why, what would you expect? Would you search for "shirts that don't have stripes"? Or "shirts lacking stripes"?

>Why, what would you expect?

I'd expect to see some of the much touted "search intelligence", NLP, term inference, vector term analysis, and AI in action...

Google started doing that with its regular search queries several years ago. There are thousands of complains on HN about how it's almost impossible now to find anything without "quoting" "every" "word" "of" "your" "query".

If it's going to do that, it should do it right. If not, then I think it's fair to criticize it for not getting the search query correct.

It sounds like you expect the search engines to understand natural language, because your expectations are influenced by what is "touted". Do you think that's a realistic expectation?

This is the only interface you really get into the amazon catalog. What if you really are looking for shirts that don't have stripes? How would you formulate the query?

My first assumption is [shirts -stripes]

Of the first ten hits: Amazon: 7/10 aren't shirts (but all are stripeless) Google: All shirts, one is checked Bing: All shirts, all contain stripes in description.

Not exactly glowing for Amazon, clearly unsupported by Bing.

Like Google, Amazon is supposed to support the - operator, but, also like Google, it's not clear whether it does anything at the moment. As others here have suggested, maybe "solid shirts"?

On one hand you complain about Google assuming too much, on the other you want more interpretation. You can't have both.

I would prefer results containing words "shirt", "stripes" and "without". I don't want search engines to freely interpret my query and guess what I probably wanted to see while burying exact results in hundreds of pages of useless garbage.

I think it depends on the application. If I’m searching for products in a store I do want “shirts without stripes” to give me shirts without stripes. I have a hard time thinking of a case when including results with the word “without” would be useful when it comes to online shopping.

When I’m looking up information, like an article, especially technical information, then yes I want the search engine to do as little interpreting as possible. That’s because any interpretation rules it uses won’t always be relevant so I’d rather have more control.

But for Amazon? I don’t see how someone can see the average user typing “shirts without stripes” and getting almost nothing but shirts with stripes, and going “yup, works as expected”.

> and guess what I probably wanted

How is interpreting "shirts without stripes" as "I wish to see shirts that don't have any stripes" guessing?

I would venture to say that most people (meaning your use case is in the minority) who type "shirts without stripes" want to see results showing shirts without stripes not results "containing words "shirt", "stripes" and "without".

I think what is happening here is that you know how search engines work and so you are conditioned to expect them to do what they're doing.

«How is interpreting "shirts without stripes" as "I wish to see shirts that don't have any stripes" guessing?"»

Because I was looking for pages about the band called "Shirts without Stripes". Because I wanted pages with shirts that have stripes but where the page featured the word "without", because their shirts are without something else. Because I want to see striped shirts from the company called "Without". I don't want the machine to guess what I mean. It can never know.

Exactly. Those who want the search engine to "understand" what they are asking for when they use words like "without" may not have thought through the unintended consequences. For there is no combination of search terms that might not be interpreted in a variety of ways that the searcher never imagined, because of the ambiguity of natural language. Better to learn and use search operators, and the strategies of careful choice of keywords.

Exactly. If you want shirts without stripes then just search "shirt -stripes" (https://www.google.com/search?q=shirt+-stripes)

Precisely, as there is a better way to do it. Search for "solid-colored shirt" or "black shirt" and/or further define your search to exclude the term "stripes."