[Sigia-l] ROI/Value of Search Engine Design

[Boniface Lau]

> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On
> Behalf Of Susan.E.Hensley at WellsFargo.COM
> 
> I thought it was interesting that in all of this thread (or at least
> all I've been able to read) no one has pointed out the *reason* why
> Amazon's search is probably not going to be as good at finding
> electronics or apparel as it is at finding books and DVDs.

Has anyone clearly demonstrated that finding electronics or apparel is
not as good as finding books or DVDs? Even Jared himself resorted to
"agree to disagree" as in:

http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0302/0181print.html


For someone issuing the query "digital camera film" and getting a
result for "30MB Compact Flash Card", the search on electronics was
very good. See:

http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0302/0176print.html


> To the best of my knowledge, Amazon's books and dvd/video
> information contains extensive Metadata based on the Baker & Taylor
> service CIP and MARC records

Let's assume that is true.


> which are supplied to libraries also (this is the original market
> for the services of book jobbers like B&T: they supply libraries
> with books as well as the records that go into their catalogs).  The
> records B&T creates are based on library standards (MARC) for
> creating extensive descriptive information about a given known item.
> This is why the book search can work so well

That is a conjecture because you do not know how the metadata actually
affects Amazon's search results.


Boniface