Pro-tip: Amazon fills their page with that useless content from their ad network, just like any standard ad. uBlock Origin blocks all of it, and your search experience is restored to what you expect.

For the longest time, I couldn't understand what people were talking about when they said Amazon's search interface is terrible. People would tell me they search for a specific book or author, and get totally irrelevant results. My experience was totally opposite.

I had to finally see a screenshot from someone's browser to believe it. It turns out uBlock has been blocking this content the whole time, and I never noticed it at all.

Their search is terrible, though, and it is terrible in ways that have nothing to do with content that is or is not blocked by uBlock Origin.

It's a very fuzzy and inclusive search, and that means that it is awful for finding specific things.

If I need a bag of insulated crimp terminals ring terminals that work on #10 screws and 12 AWG wire, then: That's what I need, what I search for, and what I want to browse.

And Amazon might show me some results that fit, but they'll be mixed in with results for extension cords, and machine screws, terminals for solar panels and car batteries, and also key rings: Stuff that has that has no merit to me today.

I just want some ring terminals, and they're more willing to show me everything else instead.

The noise is worse than actually-random results since my search terms are just sprinkled all over the place.

> If I need a bag of insulated crimp terminals ring terminals that work on #10 screws and 12 AWG wire, then: That's what I need, what I search for

I too have been spoiled by parametric searching.

Nothing like going on digikey and specifying that I want to see all rs232 transceivers with maximum X ma of hysteresis, >=3 drivers, >=1 receiver that supports Y-Z operating temperature and xxx kbps.

Also gotta love rockauto where you drill down to your specific year/make/model and it lists every oil filter that's compatible segmented by quality. (But figuring out the warehouses are a total pain)

Rockauto gets it very close to correct.

The warehouse game (or at least the version that I play) is just to optimize shipping expense.

They've got a checkbox that says something like "Choose for me" that seems to help, but it kind of sucks if im being particular about a number of parts.

It would be better if I could just check all possible candidate parts as I compile an order to complete a project, and have it pick from just my selections.

(Like, maybe I don't care which brand of coated rotors I get -- at all -- so I check all of the coated rotors.

And maybe I'm happy with either Bendix or Powerstop pads, so I check both of them.

I also need an oil filter. I understand that in my car, Mahle is fine, so is Mann, and so is one particular Purolator, while I also understand that the low-end Fram is not OK.

So I might pick the candidates that make sense for me there, too.

And then, ideally: I push the "Now save me some money" button and it optimizes the order to ship one part for each set of candidates as cheaply as possible.

It doesn't seem to do this.)

Did you actually try that search? I typed in exactly what you said and got exactly those results. No uBlock Origin either.

Just the other day I dealt with this issue looking for usb 3.2 hubs, specifically powered hubs, which I kept in quotes that evidently were not respected. I was getting mostly usb 3.0 even some usb 2.0. A few usb 3.2 but not all like you’d think a quote should work for search. Also all over the place powered vs unpowered hub

I searched “powered usb 3.2 hub” (no quote) and got this as the #1 result, also labeled the “Overall Pick” and “Amazons Choice”: https://www.amazon.com/Rosonway-Individual-Switches-Aluminum...

Following that, in order, were the following:

https://www.amazon.com/Powered-LEINSIS-Individual-Switches-A...

https://www.amazon.com/RSHTECH-Individual-Switches-Splitter-...

https://www.amazon.com/ikuai-Charging-Aluminum-Splitter-Incl...

https://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-UH720-7-Port-Smart-Charging/d... (USB 3.0)

https://www.amazon.com/Rosonway-Charging-Aluminum-Splitter-R...

Am I missing something or do all but one of those do exactly what you want?

Well, they give different results for different users at different times. For me performing it just now on mobile, of the first 10 results, only 4 were usb 3.2. Most of the less relevant results were the sponsored results amazon inserts all over the place these days.

No, I didn't try it first.

I just made it up as an example of something that I had failed at in the past, on the basis that this kind of technical specificity has generally lead to daunting results in the past.

Finding specific things has generally been a frustrating mess for me on Amazon.

But I did try it just now: I searched for "ring terminals 12 #10" and got a long list of stuff that is actually worth considering.

WTF?

This is good and welcome, but it was certainly unexpected.

Perhaps their search engine has improved for some of this kind of thing.

Search on what you actually said: "insulated crimp terminals ring terminals that work on #10 screws and 12 AWG wire"

That gets a much better result.

i ise ublock origin, but I too suffer from abysmal search results on Amazon. Im sure their AI has decided ill just buy all the junk after i give up on finding what I actually looked for.

Ive also noticed lower prices for the same items if ive recently searched on walmart or target recently too…

> The worst thing for me is how the Amazon search algorithm seems to want to show you everything but the item you searched for.

Hey boss I made the site better! Through rigorous A/B testing I could figure out a way to tweak our search algorithm so people spend much more time on our site! It seems they now really enjoy browsing for products!

Ok but seriously, I have witnessed A/B testing go wrong in the past so I'm biased to blame everything on it. I wouldn't think this particular thing happened though. :)

What I could imagine is that they measure number of items bought or money spent, but even then if eg you don't also track how much of these people return stuff later you still might draw the wrong conclusions. Figuring out that a user is less likely to use your site six months down the line due to building frustration is even harder.

Amazon definitely tracks returns in their A/B tests, along with impact on long-term projections of customer value. What they also track is ad and sponsored products revenue. The sad truth with most Internet products is that advertisers are really good customers. They will pay you a lot of money with huge margins, and it's really hard for a business to say no to that.

My best guess is the algorithm has been tweaked to return exact results maybe 1/10 or 1/20 times, like a slot machine with the psychological manipulation and “reward centre activation” that comes with it.

> rigorous A/B testing

Also known as unethical, non-consensual human experimentation for profit maximization purposes.

I don't expect you to back off of your take, but you should really consider how and why you came to this conclusion.

If I put two different marketing messages on two different billboards to test whether one is more effective than the other, is that unethical non-consensual experimentation? If not, how is it different from A/B testing?

In strict terms yes, if you didn't get informed consent from your test subjects that would be unethical.

Research has a lot of policies and systems set up to ensure that if your testing involves people, you must get informed consent from the persons before even trying to do the test, and it's really not hard to imagine why this is a stringent standard -- it's very easy to miss how "simple tests" can and often are adverse to those participating in the test or have unintended consequences that the researchers didn't accommodate for, regardless of the reason they did not.

Ads are often portrayed as harmless but, like, there's a reason there are restrictions on advertising for certain highly addictive products and regulations against false or misleading advertising, or certain tactics aren't allowed.

> unethical

If this is based on the possibility that one or more of the ads is harmful, how is it less ethical than the time-honored alternative, which is skipping the study and just running the ads?

It's not. Ads are inherently unethical and it should be illegal to run them anywhere.

I think that's the crux of the matter here. A/B testing can be anything from which page layout leads people to complete their shopping check out process to which ad campaign has the best ad click through rate. The former is pretty inoffensive, but the latter could be bad if it involves gambling/alcoholic beverage ads to people with gambling addiction or alcoholism, for example.

> you should really consider how and why you came to this conclusion.

Why? Is it false?

I get that reaction a lot. People have directly called me unhinged. I don't really mind.

Many of my ideas I developed by discussing this stuff with people on this site. I guess not every idea is socially acceptable. That's fine. I still want to express them.

> is that unethical non-consensual experimentation?

Yes. It's really not any different than some published psychology experiment. In fact it's much larger in scale, has much uglier interests behind it, has proprietary and unpublished results. Social sciences wish they could get away with shit like this!

Only reason it's "legitimate" is everyone depends on it to make their millions. Because money excuses everything. Just like unending amounts of first party malware corporations ship to users on a daily basis. We used to recognize that stuff as the malware it is: adware, spyware. But then corporations started doing the same thing and suddenly it's "legitimate" because they put some clause in some terms nobody reads.

You know the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear.

I hate what advertising has done to the modern web just as much as anyone, but this strikes me as hyperbole. Does making this sort of claim not make you… tired? What’s the point of arguing like this?

Nazi Germany and the Tuskegee Experiment are examples of “unethical, non-consensual human experimentation”. A/B testing features of software usually doesn’t make the same list.

That's a bit of a false dichotomy. It doesn't have to be either Nazism or totally chill.

Godwin's Law.*

If you're from a certain background it's exactly as described. In academia, frankly probably everywhere but tech, experiments as a term of art require consent when they involve humans.

* n.b. you really should have left it out, it was a good post through "hyperbole", got close-minded in the next sentence, then just sort of blew the hatch doors off. Sometimes we just don't know something someone else knows. Not understanding someone else doesn't require they have a psychological condition, much less one worth noting.

Please stop. "Godwin's Law" is irrelevant bullshit. It's not a "law" and it doesn't prove anything, or do anything except add noise to the conversation.

Right? Parent is basically saying “wow it’s so unfortunate that you have forced me to end the conversation here, I’d have really liked to continue, but it’d be against the (entirely made up, by me) law”.

Where?

N.b. "godwin's Law" is the famous joke that as an Internet discussion approaches infinity length, hitler will be brought up

Not a secret message saying discussion over lol

The *

A bank sends out two different mailers to see which gets a higher response rate. A politician tests different versions of his stump speech to see which gets more applause. A standup comedian tries different variants of a joke to see which gets more laughs. A grocery store chain tests different store layouts to see which encourages more spending on expensive high margin items. A big box store tests different doorbuster sales to see which gets more people into the store. A city government tests whether changing a traffic light pattern decreases delays at the intersection.

Unless you’re a hermit you are an unwitting participant in nonconsensual human experiments on a daily basis.

Comedians should just pick one joke and stick to it, it's unethical otherwise as some people might miss the laughs and others might laugh too much.

I said the term of art thing to try to ward off a reply like this, I didn't want you to have to put in the effort.

Using weasel words doesn’t make your claim any more correct.

It's not "weasel words" -- there's a difference between an "experiment where city government changes traffic light patterns" and "experiment as in Institutional Review Board", and I suggest relaxing in general.

No, there’s not. Any of the examples I gave could be conducted by university researchers subject to the IRB, or by corporate/government researchers not subject to an IRB and informed consent requirements. When I worked in my university’s statistical consulting center in graduate school I could have consulted on the same experiment either subject to IRB or not depending on who the client was.

Thank you for the shift in tone: I'm honestly unsure what you mean, steelmanning: you worked as a consultant at a university and not all work you did involving experiments was for IRB experiments --- I guess what I'd say is, the fact you're able to make that distinction does seem to confirm my initial observation that the grandparent of my original post in this thread was drawing on IRB-style experiments to condemn excesses of colloquial-style experiments in tech.

No, there is no distinction between “IRB-style experiments” and “colloquial-style experiments.” Exactly the same experiment could be subject to IRB or not depending on who was running it. The distinction you’re trying to make does not exist.

> there is no distinction between “IRB-style experiments” and “colloquial-style experiments

Then why does the IRB exist? :) How were you able to draw a distinction between your consulting assignments? QED

I didn’t. I drew a distinction between experiments subject to IRB and experiments not subject to IRB, not as a function of the type of experiment, but as a function of other factors—namely who is doing the experiment. I thought this was pretty clear:

> When I worked in my university’s statistical consulting center in graduate school I could have consulted on the same experiment either subject to IRB or not depending on who the client was.

(emphasis added). Somehow you misread it.

Yeah Im sorry, I definitely don't understand the significance of the client stuff. And it's on me.

I did have a similar job for 2 years (statistics assistant farmed out to help out on different grants as needed), but clearly not long enough.

I'm a bit flummoxed, though. I had the very distinct impression an IRB imposes certain requirements.

I shouldn't even call it an impression, you're aware of it too.

Like, an experiment under the IRB has certain tasks others don't.

I don't understand what I'm missing or what's missing in our communication here.

I almost called up an old prof to ask but any question I could think of, I sound high ("does an IRB supervised experiment have different requirements from, say, a city changing traffic light timings on a street?")

Are you just trying to say in theory an IRB could always impose no requirements other than talking to the IRB, and the IRB considered human subjects and say "go ahead, ethical"?

Note that's still a distinction. FWIW that doesn't happen in tech, no IRB, no reviews of experiments. Infamously this caused some issues at Facebook

> Does making this sort of claim not make you… tired?

Nope. Being used as an unwitting guinea pig for a trillion dollar corporation sure as hell makes me tired though. It's extremely tiresome and demoralizing, knowing that just so much as browsing their website contributes to their profits.

Basically we should have to consent for them to profit off of us in any way.

You are consenting to the experimentation by accessing the software. It’s covered by the terms and conditions.

Terms and conditions? It's hard to tell when people are joking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhsyZ5V1pok

> terms and conditions

Nobody reads that stuff.

Narrowly true, but what's the difference between this and a diner trying out new blueberry pancake recipes?

It's unethical for a diner to try out new recipes. Per OpenAI policy you need to ask consent before trying out new recipes.

We do non-consensual human experimentation all the time. Whenever you try a new outfit you're doing it.

It's an extremely broad category that contains good things (installing cycle lanes to see if they encourage cycling), neutral things (making both flower mugs and wave mugs and seeing which sells) and bad things (use your imagination).

I wouldn't make as strong a claim as the parent comment myself, but someone pointed out to me recently that A/B testing is really similar to cold reading. Is it morally equivalent to suggest to someone, in bad faith, that you're able to deliver messages from their dead loved ones, and to perform an A/B test of switching around menu items or change up some language to try and get fewer people to abandon their carts?

I lean towards "no" but I have trouble either accepting or rejecting the proposition. It's hard for me to say that A/B testing is done in bad faith, but it's also hard for me to say it's entirely unmanipulative, either.

Amazon's founding principle of "customer obsession" has been turned inside out -- at least when it comes to thinking of us consumers as the cherished customers. Those days are over.

The new "customers" at the center of Amazon's business model are a global assortment of insta-merchants that don't make the products, don't handle their own logistics and don't have recognizable brands. So -- whoosh! -- in comes Amazon as the ultimate partner/toll-collector. For a fee (or actually for many fees) it will shine up these impostors to the point that they can conduct a lot of business on the Amazon platform.

When Amazon provides distorted search results, my hunch is that it's providing boosted listings for whatever pseudo-merchants are willing to pay up. Or that have agreed to buy other Amazon services. And, hey, Amazon is going the extra mile to make them feel well-treated

And it’s bonkers how little they care about things that impact the customer. I’m a “Vine” reviewer (free* products in exchange for a review). Sellers game this system by listing a dozen or two duplicate SKUs and submit them to Vine, each in very small quantities (<5). Then, they wait for the reviews to come in. Then any of the SKUs which got negative reviews are deactivated, and the rest of the listings are merged into one. Instant highly-reviewed product! A complete mockery of what both reviews and Vine are supposed to be about, yet Amazon turns a completely blind eye. I mean, one non-skilled FTE could do the job of policing Vine for abuse like that, and they do not even care a bit to try.

*Note, they 1099 you for full retail value so really it’s just a discount of 100% minus your marginal fed and state income tax rate!

Re: Vine reviewers (recipient of a free product): whenever I see only their reviews on a product, always 5 stars even on the most garbage chinese-made ones, I know what to avoid.

To me, seeing their review is an indication of terrible product that decided to pay off some easily corruptible reviewers that give away 5 stars just to keep receiving free stuff.

I understand your explanation, but as a user, established brands don't have to pay off reviewers at all.

This is definitely the worst thing about Amazon. I pay them $120/year or whatever, and I search a specific product by a specific brand, and the entire browser screen shows me brands and even products I didn't even search for. I should not get ads in a store that I pay to use, especially in search.

If they keep you showing you ads, and you keep paying them $120, then I can't see why they'd stop showing you ads.

If they stopped paying, then why they'd stop showing them ads either.

Because they stopped visiting a mostly useless site.

I definitely agree that they don't return brand results. I don't use Amazon enough to remember the example(s) that were the final straw for me. Do you have any examples/remember which brand search you did? I am curious if some categories are "better" than others.

It was Anker or Bose — just now I searched “Bose noise-cancelling headphones,” and on the results screen there’s first a carousel of a bunch of JBL headphones, followed by two results that are some brands called Raycon and Tozo.

If I squint I can sort of understand sponsored products on actual product-detail pages or on the homepage, but in search on a shopping site it feels really user-hostile — you’re searching because you’re looking for something specific, not browsing.

Stop paying them. If you pay, you'll actually become a better product rather than cease being the product.

I don't even use Amazon, but I definitely sympathize with prime subscribers. It's nearly a requirement for average people in their 30s. Have kids or limited time? Spouse likes a show on prime? Live in a rural area and the walmart 30 minutes away doesn't carry what you need? Shop at wholefoods regularly? Use a kindle?

As a single eccentric mid 30s guy in a small city, I get by without it. Its still annoying for me. This is the Microsoft-esque bundling strategy where several things you need are bundled in with a bunch you don't. It covers enough of the average demand to be nearly essential and products subsidize each other keeping the cost low.

I doubt it would pass the test of consumer-harm. However, it clearly stifles innovation as it is impossible to compete in any bundled category when your competitor is a megalith offering service nearly free or at cost.

This is why the poster above feels bullied. They know you need to subscribe. I personally quit prime years ago but I don't expect enough people to be able to do this to matter. For many people, even with the price bullying, bad ux and anti-consumer shit, the value is still there even if the original ROI has shrunk.

I'm a ruralite, the population of my town is 15k. There is no costco or sams club here. Whole Food's is a name I know only from seeing it online. We could not even keep little ceasar's open. Want clothes? hope you like Target or Kohl's, that's what we have.

I got rid of Prime last November and the thing that I noticed with my shopping is that the blue checkmark made a lot of garbage palatable that I can now simply skip over. I always could skip over it, but now I have no incentive to give it a chance at all. I don't even need to give Amazon the chance, actually. Specifically with clothes, I was fooling myself into thinking I would find good items with a blue checkmark. All the quality brands have taken their ball and gone home to their own website, now only chaff remains.

The extra week on every purchase is a little grating, but honestly, maybe spending money online SHOULD have some friction. the blue checkmark is brainrot. It's tricking you into importing garbage instead of being more selective. It's inviting you to impulse purchase instead of pausing and considering if this is worth it. free thyself.

> I don't even use Amazon, but I definitely sympathize with prime subscribers. It's nearly a requirement for average people in their 30s.

This seems like an exaggeration. You don't need to pay for Prime in order to shop on Amazon. You can even get free shipping without it. I can't think of any reason I'd want it. The only time I've ever had Prime was when Amazon somehow dark-patterned me into accidentally clicking it. I don't think not having Prime makes you eccentric, nor is eccentricity a prerequisite for living your life without a totally optional shopping service.

Even in Apples "curated", "premium" official app store I never get the thing I search for first.

I always get an ad for something else (that isn't marked as an ad).

I believe this occurs because Amazon allows sellers to promote their items by bidding on keywords— and often times, the highest quality keywords will be specific category-defining brands or products. At the same time, the original supplier of that brand or product keyword won’t need to spend their advertising budget on that query because customer conversion is high enough despite the friction.

Similarly, I think sponsored search results are unconscionable. Amazon is already taking a cut of every sale (which is obviously fine), but then they're also letting knock-off companies pay to show their product above the genuine article.

I also hate how the seller's pages are basically useless as well. I want to buy something from a specific brand and going to that page I can't find more than half of their product list on their own seller page.

In 2022, Amazon had 38 billion dollars in ad revenue. That's ads in that search page. Between the ad revenue, and variations in what sale is more profitable for Amazon, you get a lot of incentive misalignment. The page that makes Amazon the most money is not the one where the item you were thinking about is the first thing on the page. Giving you a worse page is just far more profitable.

I think I'd probably cope with it including irrelevant and mislabelled stuff and the inevitable tons of Alibaba crap if it (.co.uk) didn't fail so hard at pagination that most of the results were inaccessible. Feels like some marketing bod has wargamed the "bust if we fix this people buy cheaper variants of the same product and don't check the Prime box" scenario and decided that as they're Amazon and people will use them regardless, broken search results are better than functional search results

> The worst thing for me is how the Amazon search algorithm seems to want to show you everything but the item you searched for.

Truer words have never been spoken.

>The worst thing for me is how the Amazon search algorithm seems to want to show you everything but the item you searched for.

They may be suggesting on sellers request unsold or rarely sold products that vaguely relate to searches, but sellers want to get rid of quickly.

My terrible suspicion is that these algos are good for the majority of people in the sense that they are prone to manipulation and buy these inferior borderline fraud products all the time, so the algo finds its target function results and optimize for these.

This is what we don’t seem to accept. Enshittification.

Also shipping and return policy is so convenient, that even the grumbling people are eating this up.

While it's obvious that this is somehow commercially/financially advantageous to Amazon, I'd love to know more about why. What are the economics behind the shovelware merchandise Amazon upranks to users?

It's very simple. Amazon makes a lot of money on advertising and pay-for-placement within their store listings. So when you run a search, Amazon can easily make more money by showing items that they're paid the most to show, vs what you were actually looking for.

Yeah it's almost a double-dip in some ways because they are taking money from a product's competitor to show you their alternative when you search for what you actually want, and then when you still/eventually end up going to the product page for the thing you want and you buy that, and Amazon takes a cut of that sale too..

If it wasn't a super shitty user experience, it would be genius!

It looks like Amazon created the same thing Google did. Paying keywords for ranking and if you don’t they decide what comes up organically. They crawl and decide which goes into what order.

Right. Amazon profits, at least in the near-term, from the enshittification of Amazon. Results are obvious: it's a shitty experience.

Because just like Walmart, they're trying to get a price as low as possible to kill off competition. Amazon isn't "flooded" by these brands, they are purposefully seeking these sellers out and helping them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-co...

> A seller in America might start with a brand idea and need to figure out how to get it manufactured; a seller connected to a factory in China’s manufacturing capital needs to figure out how to sell to Americans, which Amazon has been working hard to facilitate.

> “If a Chinese factory is able to give a better price than a seller in America, Amazon is happy with that,” said Kian Golzari, who works with marketplace sellers and corporate clients to source products from China.

If amazon sells a push broom for $10, why would would someone buy a push-broom from the local hardware store for $20?

Local hardware store struggles, eventually goes out of business...now everyone has no choice except to buy online, and guess who dominates that?

And now you're reliant on Amazon for everything.

Same thing Walmart did to endless communities across America. Dump stuff cheap in an area to starve all the local businesses to death, and then everyone had no choice but to buy everything from, and work at, walmart. And if anyone gets uppity about unions, close the store and now everyone within an hour has to drive even further to get anything...so everyone is terrified of any sort of workplace organization.

I've had similar experiences with the Google Play Store. For example, if I search for "Instagram" verbatim, my first result is TikTok.

I could not reproduce this result on desktop or Android. Any additional details to the steps you took?

The results may be affected by my region (Germany) and/or age (< 25). It has happened multiple times as I install Instagram to post something then uninstall it right after.

I'm going to assume you're in the USA, which may be incorrect.

I live in the third world, in Amazon's estimation-- Switzerland, Ireland, the Netherlands. If I search for something, there's a better-than-not chance that it will explicitly say in the search results under the item "ships to [Switzerland]," but when I click the item, I get "sorry, this item does not ship to your location" and I can't order it. It makes searching on Amazon incredibly frustrating because I have to click through every garbage 3rd-party knockoff of the thing I'm looking for to find the one garbage 3rd-party knockoff that ships to my uninhabited, remote shithole of the European backwaters (Zurich, Amsterdam, Cork). But will Amazon offer me an option to filter out things I can't have? No, of course not. Why? Shut up and stop asking questions, that's why.

What's worse, even this is still miles better than stuff-availability in Ireland was 20 years ago when I first moved over from Chicagoland. That was a blow to my expectations, I tell you hwat. I may have single-handedly kept eBay.com in the black between 2005-2016...

> I may have single-handedly kept eBay.com in the black between 2005-2016

Naw, that's one of eBay's strong points. Lots of ex-US business from int'l people willing to sell to others internationally. Or just breaking tariffs/barriers/price discrimination/parallel imports.

I just never understood most American seller's resistance to selling internationally, but worked out in my favour as a seller. I just charged a bit more than cost for shipping and it made up for any losses + inventory moved faster.

Heh - until you buy it... then it shows you a 'suggested' purchase to buy it again on every page :-P