Tuesday 2 June 2009

Search results on Amazon...

There appears to be a discrepancy between browsers when it comes to search results on Amazon. I accidentally found this out when searching what other music from my uploads has made it onto Amazon:
First I had worked in the Google Chrome browser. When searching on Amazon under "All Departments" for "reinhold behringer", then only my music shows up.
When, however, I do the same search on the Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, all my stuff comes up (the AR book which I edited more than 10 years ago, a few of my conference articles, and conference proceedings where I had been in the committee).

To compare, here are the actual URLs sent by each browser:
Chhome: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=reinhold+behringer&x=0&y=0
MS IE8: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=reinhold+behringer
The only difference is that Chrome appends seemingly meaningless coordinates. I added them to the URL in MS IE8 - the same result as before, each browser delivers different results.

This is quite astonishing! Does Amazon somehow discrinate against the Google Chrome browser? Or does Google Chrome send a hidden preference for showing only music results?

I have no idea why this is happening...

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