Is there a way to use the NOT operator on Amazon?
I'm trying to find books, and am finding it very frustrating to be unable to filter out books I don't want based on author or subject.
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Sign up to join this communityIs there a way to use the NOT operator on Amazon?
I'm trying to find books, and am finding it very frustrating to be unable to filter out books I don't want based on author or subject.
You can use the minus sign (-
) in front of the terms you want to exclude from the search results.
For example: stephen king -dark
ECC -"NON-ECC" -"NON ECC" -"non-ECC" -"Non-ECC"
STILL returns boat loads of product titles containing "NON-ECC" making it feel almost impossible to find ecc ram.
– user3338098
Dec 13 '16 at 7:22
-
sign trick does not work anymore : "Quick Charge" -Type -"USB C"
– SebMa
May 11 '19 at 23:40
Thanks to this answer, I've discovered that amazon respects + before a keyword too!
For example: Radeon +7990 will give you exactly 7990's results and not variations on models like 6990 or 7970 like it normally does.
+
to a search term just assigns extra weight to that term, rather than acting as a Boolean operator that excludes all non-matching results. So, non-matching results do still show up, and still frustratingly often; just not as often as if +
weren't used. (I guess Amazon is using some kind of fuzzy logic for its search engine. Whatever the underlying reasoner is doing, though, it is doing it badly. Amazon's search engine is awful.)
– user6757
Mar 14 '18 at 2:49
As of July 2015, at least there is no reliable way to use a NOT operator.
At least on Amazon.de searching for hard drive -usb
will reduce the number of USB drives, but already the last result on the first page contained "USB" in the title.
Searching for tischventilator -usb
(German for table fan) on the other hand pushes usb devices even more to the top of the result list than just searching for tischventilator
.
On Amazon.com again, adding -usb
to table fan
has the intended effect.
In Feb 2021 Amazon still does not regard the NOT operator.
So the workaround is indeed to use Google Search with e.g.
site:amazon.com lightbulbs -led
Of course, you don't have the sorting of Amazon anymore.