John Herrman says that Amazon still works pretty well for most people:
But, at the core of that experience, something has become unignorably worse. Late last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon’s customer satisfaction had fallen sharply in a range of recent surveys, which cited COVID-related delivery interruptions but also poor search results and “low-quality” items. More products are junk. The interface itself is full of junk. The various systems on which customers depend (reviews, search results, recommendations) feel like junk. This is the state of the art of American e-commerce, a dominant force in the future of buying things. Why does it feel like Amazon is making itself worse? Maybe it’s slipping, showing its age, and settling into complacency. Or maybe — hear me out — everything is going according to plan.
Quite so. My own gripe is that Amazon's search interface just flatly doesn't work. Herrman starts his piece with an example: looking for a spatula. That should be no problem, and generally speaking it's not. Type in "spatula" and you'll get loads of people selling spatulas. But type in "metal spatula" and . . .
OK, I just did this and it worked fine. The first three pages of search results were exclusively metal spatulas.
Fine. But trust me, this is not always the case. Last night, for example, I searched for oversize blankets. But even when I used Amazon's own suggested search terms, no more than 20% of the results—I'm being generous here—were actually oversize. The rest were just ordinary blankets of an ordinary size. When I added "cotton" to the search, only about half the results were cotton.
I am savvy enough to ignore all the sponsored results, since I know they'll show up if they're even in the same ballpark as my search terms. But even the normal results don't match your search most of the time.
But here's the thing: I did, eventually, find a couple of blankets that fit my search. I was annoyed that it took so long to click through all the junk, but really, I only spent five or ten minutes. And if it weren't for e-commerce, there's a good chance I'd never have found what I was looking for even if I'd spent all day running around town to various sellers of household goods.
So Amazon has a huge array of products that produces a very long tail. This means that even if you're looking for something unusual you can probably find it. But that huge array also means it might take a while to sort through the junk. Easy come, easy go.
Amazon can be difficult even when you specify an exact part number.
But it's nothing compared to how degraded Google is. You should just add "reddit" or *cringe* stack exchange if you have some kind of question you just want answered.
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And try to find a movie on Amazon Prime by searching through the categories.
But, seriously, Amazon needs to clean this up. The only thing that makes up for it is the return policy, most things can go back.
Just imagine what it will be like once AI takes over. You will only get to see stuff that maximizes their profit no matter what you do.
This isn't just an Amazon problem, this is a search engine problem more generally. I frequently search Amazon and Google and a few other places for very specific book that should have only a few hits (yesterday it was "Oikonomidès listes de préséances," a fairly rare work on Byzantine administrative history) and I get all kinds of trash. I suspect the internet has simply gotten too big and too complex for the search technology that presently exists.
FWIW, I searched using your specific book title and used the command "site:.edu" and turned up one hit -- a PDF of the book. That took a minute, so maybe it's not really a search engine problem?
As a former academic librarian, I strongly agree that most people don’t know about the power tools available in most search engines. Sometimes I forget to use the tools, myself. It would be a great thing if all search engines provided an obvious and helpfully designed link to their Boolean and other tools, with brief instructions on their use. In every case, one (and usually more) of these elements is missing.
Surely there is cutting edge AI at work in Amazon’s search? …. Perhaps you should have asked ChatGPT to tell you about oversized, cotton blankets on Amazon?
I'm sure there is. But the algorithms are tuned to feed you crap.
Steve, that sounds a little too harsh. I think the algorithms are tuned to find "things that might be close" because the search engines have to deal with a lot of users who (a) have no idea how to spell, or (b) have no idea exactly what the name is for the thing they're looking for, or maybe even (c) who aren't sure what they're looking for, and hoping if they throw a line in the water something will bite that suits them.
In short, the algorithms are tuned for a user base who are not NEARLY as smart or as well educated or as precise as the folks who read Jabberwocking.
Bingo
Sorry, but they feed you crap. Example: I search for Hosa IBT-402, which is a Bluetooth transceiver adapter. To Amazon's credit, the Hosa IBT-402 tops the search results. But the rest of the page, and all of the following page, are things that have nothing to do with Bluetooth transceivers: cables, patch boxes, an oscilloscope (!), etc.
I know for a fact that there are many other products similar to the Hosa, but zero of them show up in the search.
The proportion of crappy and/or counterfeit products on Amazon just keeps getting higher and higher. Soon it will be Alibaba in all but name.
When I can, I try to find what I'm looking for at a more specialized online store that doesn't rely on third-party sellers.
And they just laid off a large chunk of their UX team. I know that it's not search related, but it will contribute to the continue enshittification of the experience as a whole.
You're actually better off using Google to search for Amazon items. It's obvious that Amazon's goal with search is not to present you with the items you are actually looking for.
My complaint also. I searched for something specific and saw only two of the specified and the rest way out in left field. Good thing I'm old and not in a hurry. It is rather frustrating.
The company has difficulty in getting retailers to properly categorize their goods, and some retailers just hijack searches to return irrelevant results to crowd the top of the page with their products. But eventually, if you use enough filters, you will find what you're looking for.
The question is, what price are you willing to pay? Some products will have prices fluctuate every few hours. Many products have divergent prices depending on the size. A size 10 shoe might be $15 but 10 1/2 is $55, and so on. Other than just dropping things into my cart then saving them for later, I use Keepa.com to review the volatility of prices of a given item. It's eye-opening to see the range of prices.
I cancelled prime and mostly shop elsewhere. My main gripe is highly local - their delivery is shit for me. If it is much bigger than a letter I have to come to the door for delivery - my door is directly on the sidewalk, with a mail slot.
This fails to happen in every way you can think - they just leave shit on the sidewalk, or fail to ring the doorbell, or ring it but take off before I get there, if I am even home. (Did I mention I live alone?)
So I basically only order used books that will not ship from Amazon. Those ship via a reliable logistics, like USPS.
But I also order less because, lacking prime, every fucking page is a massive prime ad, with more fucking prime upsells in between the fucking prime ads, that also interrupt the purchase(!) process with more Prime ads. Fuck you, Amazon, I'll walk down to Target instead.
Interestingly, I spent a bit of time yesterday trying to figure out what "Temu" is, since all I see on the internet these days is their ads for wireless earbuds for $5 and shoes for $3, etc etc. Of course, as an American occasionally in the crosshairs of Silicon Valley's latest get rich quick scheme (for the execs, I mean; I'm referring to Uber, WeWork etc...) I'm familiar with previously unheard of companies trying to get me addicted to their stuff so that they can then raise prices...
Anyhoo, long story short, Temu is a Chinese company trying to buy its way into the American market, with the goal, pretty obviously, of displacing Amazon. Apparently there was an earlier company last year, called "Wish", which tried to do roughly the same thing (I vaguely remember their ads, I think), but with more outright fraud (i.e., never sending the products ordered, then doing "market research" on how many people complained, I guess so as "optimize" the non-fullfilment of orders) Wish has faded and its stock went from $20 a few years back to under $1 now.
Yada yada, all of this explained to me why I've noticed Amazon's website become so utterly unusable and chaotic in the past year or two; it's because they're responding to the Chinese competition by imitating the Chinese.
Somewhat related, a well-known (ex?) writer for the website Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow, recently wrote an essay about how all companies on the web eventually descend into garbageosity... This essay discusses Amazon and seems to be getting a lot of notice... Here is a link and his first graf:
HERE IS HOW platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
I thought it was a little bit ironic that Amazon was getting ragged on so bad across the internet just as Ezra Klein joined the "Barnes & Noble is killing it!" bandwagon...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/28/opinion/barnes-noble-amazon-bookstore.html
(basically, Klein is one of a number of recent voices pointing out that B&N tossed out "algorithms" and is thriving...)
Wish's business model was to optimize how much they could get away with stealing from their customers?
hmm, who could do it better? --let's send this to Donald Trump so he can start his own more resplendent and patriotic version, based on his love and commitment and respect for America. It's all about the beautiful people out there who need to know they're getting what they pay for.
Here is the entertaining NYT story on Wish I was referring to...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/07/business/media/wish-online-dollar-store.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhkT1UbBCbfQMMmqBCdnr_KzbA9jzjhLTOVDDFEy-UTDs2M_EPJbLAmfMc0xTndRMNENPVnYs1O-dJlHh4nTRi08NzDkY4ZIi4xpMXpBT9v05uSUPUx-jGyKzSyd7c6zrDksleIbmi9XfHZhXByJQh1sNAyIwHRrH8Nx6_FEeZ-y4M-ia9nXsYmMG9GMCqavPDoCQF8OMGHbnze6wowW-JbW1LDjILWquJAIEgJVwWwHD4o6n086dhdJNoXIK75Shcic8f9irwXYXd6dGx4YXv_LCUmbuaD9Ky44A&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
+1 - Wired article, good read
Isn't this basically because vendors pay Amazon to push their products based on certain searches, even if whatever widget it is is not an exact description of what you're looking for? It seems like if I'm searching some broad category of product these days on Amazon, I have to wade through 10 "sponsored" returns before I get to something I might be interested in. Very occasionally the "sponsored" product may actually be something I click on and look at, but usually not. They're wasting a lot of money on me.
Amazon makes ordering easy so if you can find what you want quickly or you are reordering something it works well, and I almost always get free shipping even without Prime. But, if you are searching for something specialized and/or expensive you can often get a better deal and better information elsewhere. I first try direct from the manufacturer for things like electronics. For a lot of ordinary stuff often the best source is a Walmart or Target nearby, with a lot less hassle.
It's so true about Amazon these days, you have to work harder to separate out the crap from the good stuff. I do use shopping add ons to try to get the best prices. The worst is trying to shop for commodity type stuff, say sheets/towels, you absolutely cannot tell what is crap and what is good. Also shoe shopping is awful, cannot easily drill down to find specific brands. I've never even bothered shopping for clothes, I figure there's high risk of getting junk.
Well yeah, but hasn't that been true of mail order/online order forever? There's only so much you can tell from a catalog description.
I don't mind taking a chance on clothing items and household goods from amazon with their super-easy returns (I use the UPS shop half-a-mile from my house - just show the code, no need to repack). And I've gotten some very good things, but have probably returned more than I have kept.
Nope, there are specialized sites where you generally can trust that you're not buying crap. I order sheets from LLBean and I get a quality product.
This is where reputation comes into play. A brand can establish itself at a certain quality level, and consumers will make purchasing decisions based on this. The problem is that a brand can at any time get a short term windfall by cheaping out. This trashes the brand reputation, but modern business practice often incentivizes the quick buck over brand stability.
Add Home Depot to the list of crap sites. I first complained at their local store about ten years ago, and the employee said just between us, it was a total joke -- they hated it just as much, and they had to use it all day. It has not gotten one bit better since then.
As others say, it's dumbed down a lot from what it could be, for people who aren't too sure what they want, or even how to spell it. I submit too, that half its objective is to distract you with other things that you might buy, also or instead or never even thought of that, if they happened to get dangled in front of you.
My own biggest gripe with Amazon is with the way they sell, or facilitate the production of, counterfeit or otherwise unreliable BOOKS. And this topic does not seem to be extensively covered in the article Kevin mentions.
The problem takes many forms. Sometimes Amazon sells pirated versions of new or recent books; other times it allows the on-demand publication and/or sale of old and classic books, but these on-demand productions lack any sign of credibility (such as an editor, a recognizable publishing house, any reference to previous editions, introductions, historical info, author info, etc...).
And, after sometimes buying some of those on-demand versions of classic books for use or reference in a class, I've been unable to use them. There isn't even enough info available for an incomplete MLA citation; hence, from an academic perspective, such publications are unreliable to the point of being useless.
And here's the thing: it can be surprisingly difficult to spot these problematic books based on the info that Amazon makes available. Sometimes, in fact, the info provided about a pirated or on-demand publication is misleading to the point of simply being false.
Yet, in my experience, there are other online booksellers, such as thriftbooks or Half Price Books, who seem to largely avoid these problems. Why does a giant like Amazon allow what appears to be rampant book fraud and profiteering while lesser outfits have seemingly avoided the problem?
I don't know, but this issue has led me to almost completely shift my online book buying away from Amazon. My first online stop for books is now always Barnes and Noble. Then I check out some of the other online vendors I just mentioned. Then I go to the sites of specific bookstores like Powells (in PortLand) or the Strand (in NYC). And the results, especially for older books in the public domain, are much better when simply avoiding the junk books on Amazon.
Thank you for the tip. I was recently looking for a hard copy of The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield. The pickings on Amazon were slim. This didn't surprise me. While it was popular in its day, it is pretty obscure nowadays (though still quite funny). I just looked it up at Powells, and several modern editions that look quite credible are there. It would never have occurred to me that there would be editions that Amazon missed. Lesson learned.
I have long noticed the amount of absolute crap in Amazon search results for books. Third party sellers are of little use, as well. What I do get from Amazon that I like is related results that can help me find more titles to check out. I will then go to my state database created and maintained by the state library, uni system, private colleges, and many others for reliable bibliographic data. After that, the local-ish independent bookstores who will ship to order the books I want.
I was surprised to learn recently that Amazon is now one of the biggest online advertising businesses. I shouldn't have been surprised, mind you—but I was.
Apparently a huge portion of the results you see when you go to their site searching for a product actually consists of ads paid for by sellers. This is more or less Taobao's business model, and Amazon has evolved along these lines.
At least for pricier items, it's probably a good idea to do one's research off Amazon as much as possible, and only then (once you know exactly what you want to buy, and you have a good idea of price) proceed to Amazon to do the purchase (if that even ends up being the best place to buy it, which it may well not be).
Amazon needs to incorporate Boolean search terms with their search algorithm. Right now there's no way to narrow down a search by excluding words the way you can in eBay and Google: just enter a minus in front of the term to be excluded. Drives me crazy!
To answer the question asked in the New Yorker title, Cory Doctorow's analysis of "enshittification" has amply sufficient explanatory power. This is a valuable addition to the English lexicon.
Myself, I pulled back from Amazon a few years back for largely the reasons given in the article There is too much junk from third party sellers. Even assuming the returns process works smoothly, this is a poor customer experience. The bottom line is that Amazon has removed itself from backing up the products it sells, apart from the returns process and not always then. At this point I use it to research book purchases which I then get through my local indie bookstore. I buy CDs, because I am old. There are no local indie music stores anymore, so that is the one product category that I still buy from Amazon.
Of late almost every important search when I don’t have time to waste I enclose the search terms in double quotes. It’s usually a bit better, but more generic the terms less successful it is. On some platforms such as eBay I used to use -“exclude” to exclude phrases but even those don’t work as well any more. What I can’t fathom is if there is an incentive to these platforms to make searches totally ineffective? Like mall stores hiding exits in order to trap customers a bit longer?
It is not rocket science to make searches more effective, so it’s intentional. I am curious to see who is able to penetrate this stupid race to the bottom and make moola from it
—r
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