alt Hacker NewsThat experience actively drives me towards other retailers.
I want to buy what I want to buy, and I will never buy things that I do not want to buy. If the time ever comes that I am tricked into buying the wrong thing from Amazon, then I'm sending it back on their dime.
If that means that only 3 things fit, then I only want to see exactly 3 things. If that means that 0 things fit, then 0 is also a valid result. In response to these results, I can then elect to soften my constraints at my own volition.
But an Amazon search typically results endless pages of vaguely-related products that represent a jumbled mess of things largely do not fit or only-sorta fit the broad concept of what I intend to purchase.
When I want a 4300 Kelvin D2S HID headlight bulb for my car, then that's all that I want to find when I search for it. I do not want results for LEDs. I do not want selective yellow bulbs. I do not want 5000k or 6500k or 10000k. I do not want an "upgrade" kit, nor D2R bulbs, nor D3S. None of those things are useful to me.
The list of things that I do not want is infinite, and when Amazon presents a seemingly-infinite list of them then that represents the opposite of usefulness.
I only want to peruse listings that match. I require no more and no less than this in order to be satisfied. There is no possible amount of additional noise that can ever dissuade me from seeking the thing that I very specifically desire.
A modern LLM can weed out and separate the bad results from the good ones and give me an easier time of making a purchase decision, but it can only do so when it is not blocked from the start.
> that's all that I want to find when I search
That ship has long since sailed for every search product. Companies have long-since learned that intent-based results are much more profitable (why show an empty result page when you can show something for people to buy or click on?), but it is also often genuinely useful when your search is not perfect or what you want doesn't actually exist. I agree that it is annoying when you really truly do only want something very specific and the ranking prioritizes the wrong things (e.g., sponsored results, more profitable items, etc.) over exact matches, but can you honestly and truly say you've never found any value from intent search algorithms?