Comment by jambalaya8
19 hours ago
Searched for jeans a few days ago. I got about 3.3% each, scattered through several dozen pages, of two American brands; 1.65% each another couple of brands; a smattering of one or two results for another couple of brands; the remaining approximately 90% were the almost exact same jeans (maybe the same), under several names... pages and pages of them. It is almost impossible to shop for clothes on Amazon now. It used to be just selecting for 1 or 2 day delivery only would trim down the chaff, although now those products are also serviced through the warehouses (and there are less options for one day or same day delivery than years ago, Prime or not).
Some of the products aren't that bad (most are at least better than these sorts of results would spit out when it first started, years ago), but the prices are also at the same not-too-cheap, not pricey moderate price-point as the (of course I know many of those brands are not American but I know how they fit) known brands. Whoever is coding language parsing at Amazon.com must be really challenged by the brands; I get that; but there has to be a way to make it less stressful to shop. Maybe Bezos is just secretly trying to get us all to buy clothes where we don't buy food and books. Ha.
But yes, the language and sorting models being used by Amazon suck.
It’s not just clothes. Unless the item is a very specific name brand thing, I find Amazon nearly useless for discovery. It’s effectively Ali Express with much higher markup and much faster shipping. I suppose there’s a market for that.
Unfortunately for them, I’d rather buy cheep Chinese crap from a local retailer where there is still a human buyer in the loop choosing something that’s not the lowest bottom of the barrel junk.
When I worked there a long time ago I spoke to the search team about moving more towards a New Egg style filtering model. When I’m looking for something there’s often very specific features I want. Now they’ve decided to go in the complete opposite direction and it doesn’t matter what type, they’ll show me the items they think I want. I’ve bought more than a few wrong things due to this. Returns must not factor into whatever fees they’re making off everything else.
I guess for things like clothes or generic homegoods, I've seen this deluge of random China goods. But shopping for other things, like electronics, it does a really good job of surfacing what I'm actually looking for, whether that be name brand or generic.
If I'm buying a curtain rod, the MUDLRHK brand is effectively indistinguishable from a "name brand" or house brand. They're basically all coming from the same factories in China anyways - a outside of maybe Costco, there's not a human buyer exercising that much oversight at Walmart, Macys, or Kohls.
Surprisingly, their "Alexa for Shopping" feature has been quite good for finding products that contain a specific set of desired features.
I was looking for a device that plugs into my car's 12V cigarette lighter outlet, connects with my phone's Bluetooth, outputs the audio to 3.5mm aux (my car has aux input but no Bluetooth), has no battery, automatically turns on with my car, has next and previous track buttons, and outputs USB-C with at least 30W.
Amazon's search filters were useless for this, but their LLM was able to read through reviews and suggest products that come very close. Unfortunately, no exact product exists that fulfills all the requirements.
2 replies →
> Now they’ve decided to go in the complete opposite direction and it doesn’t matter what type, they’ll show me the items they think I want.
Not exactly, they'll show you the items they want you to buy/are paid to promote. They don't actually think you want the crap their search surfaces, at most they think they can con you into buying that stuff anyway as long as they make it difficult or impossible for you to find what you're actually looking for.
Yeah, the pity is that Amazon almost went this direction. They have a set of filters! They just don’t work. Not only do they clearly not want you to use them (the filters prematurely reset if you do virtually anything), but their coverage is weird and again, they don’t even work. You’d think Amazon themselves would have basic, valid data but they just don’t care.
As an example of how this stacks up, in the app, I filter air fryers to be red. Easy, right? One option, two sponsored, three more options, an autoplay video ad for a non-red one, then another sponsored link, “customers frequently viewed carousel with more sponsored links, one of which is not red, (so this is a full phone screen and a half with zero real results), one more result, two sponsored links, three more results, and then a non-red deep fryer, which is not even an air fryer to begin with. How does a silver deep fryer end up in these results at all?
The shittiness continues. A sponsored link to a toaster oven (not an air fryer either), another sponsored link, a real result, a used air fryer, silicone liners (not air fryers), a carousel of “trending now” including four of five items that are not air fryers either (and a low-rated red air fryer I haven’t seen yet… which makes me think they are outright lying about it being a ‘trending’ item), another carousel with “brands related to your search”, ALSO sponsored, two more results, another near full screen autopay video ad, three sponsored links for air fryer accessories, two real results for more accessories, then two more real red air fryer results, though one is only available used.
I’m exhausted just typing that out. It’s soul-crushing. A good two-thirds of total screen real estate in any given session is just pure ads. And I typed “red air fryer”, so don’t show me a red air fryer silicone liner! That’s not what I asked for. If you must, label it in a carousel that says “matching accessories, that’s both user friendly and appropriate!
Most of the stuff Amazon search spits out by default now is identical to what you find on temu, just at 5 times the price.
You can make it slightly more useful by changing the sort order to average rating or best selling, but for many "normie" things the bestselling will just be the crap amazon shows people by default.