I was going to point out the obvious flaw in amazon.com’s new book-searching feature, but Bookslut beat me to it:
Amazon.com has completed its newest sparkly addition. Now when you search for a keyword, it searches the text of 120,000 nonfiction books and offers them in your results. I’m sure this is handy in some way. I bet people all over are rejoicing. But all I know is that when I was searching for “curing pig” in an attempt to find the book “Curing the Pig” by Liza Granville, I got 6,454 results, none of the first page results being the book. When I searched for Liza Granville, I got 202 results, none of the first page results being the book. I had to type in the damn ISBN number to find it. I’m sure this is handy, but you can’t turn it off. It just clutters up simple searches, hiding what you’re really looking for. Wired, however, calls the move ingenious.
Amazon.com is also having a contest to see how their “Search Inside the Book” feature has changed your life. Do you think if I bitch and complain that the feature is not optional I’ll win a Segway?
Granted, it really is fun to search your own name, as BuzzMachine seems to have been the first to point out (and yes, that’s the very first thing I did). But it’s only fun once. So I really do hope amazon.com figures out quickly that “Search Inside the Book” needs an on-off switch. Like, say, tomorrow.