The Basics

Type words for the products or company you want to find

Do not use AND, OR, or ( ) unless searching for those words or characters

Put + in front of a word or phrase which must be present

Use quotes to specify exact phrases

Example: +"sheet music"  +guitar  rock  "heavy metal"  blues

...finds only records with the exact phrase "sheet music" and the word guitar, and it will favor listings with mention of rock, "heavy metal" or blues

Listings for sheet metal, heavy rocks, sheet rock, recorded guitar music, metal guitars, etc. will be avoided.

Most searches also look for word variants. In this case: "rocks", "rocker" "rocking" "guitars" and "blue". Usually helpful, but this time all these word variants lead us astray.

In cases like this uncheck the Similar Words option.

• What characters can I use in my search words?
• What are "Listing Types"?
• What information or fields can be word searched?
• Why do I see listings that don't contain my search words?
• How does Buyer's Index define "Retail" and "Wholesale"?
• What is meant by "Conditional" and "Unconditional" return policies?
• What does the "Similar Words" option do?

A: Most keyboard characters may be used in your search words. For example, 14K gold, CD-ROM, Bloomindale's, 3M, etc.

A: Buyer's Index has 7 types of listings. You can limit your search to one or more types:

Web Merchant Site -- Offers products for sale by a single merchant

Printed Catalog

Directory, or Search Engine -- Listing products or merchants

For Sale by Owner Site -- Lists items for sale by people who have posted ads

Reviews Site -- Has independent product reviews or merchant reviews

Web Page -- Page link collected by our Web crawler

Priced Item -- Product description and price

A:

For site listings, your word search looks for matches in:

• Company or Site Name
• Byline (preferred listings only)
• Summary
• Keywords (preferred listings only)

• Page Title
• Keyword meta tag
• Full page content

• Item Description
• Keywords

A: Each listing can have hundreds of keywords for products that the company sells. We do not display the keywords, but they usually cause relevant listings to appear in your search results.

A: On Buyer's Index...

Retail means you are invited to order single items.

Wholesale means you must buy in bulk or qualify for an account

A:

"Unconditional" usually means an item may be returned for a full refund even if it is used, damaged, does not have its original packaging, etc.

"Conditional" usually means an item may be returned for a full refund if it is in original, re-sellable condition.

Shipping costs are usually not refunded.

If no return policy is shown, it means Buyer's Index does not know their return policy.

Our information on return policies is meant to be approximate, and in some cases may be completely inaccurate. A merchant's return policy may vary with the type of item (opened software, monogrammed items, electrical components, etc.)

Before you buy, always get facts directly from the merchant.

A: Buyer's Index will search for other words with the same beginning. For example, searching "bikes" will include listings with bike, biker, biking, etc. It does not find irregular variants like knife...knives. Also known as "stemming," this is usually helpful. But for some searches like "blues", "Frances" etc. you'll want to turn it off because of unuseful hits.