Amazon Product API ResponseGroups and Default results

Question

A. In our application, most of the data we work with is stored as free text .i.e. there is no categorization done as of now. We are using openNLP libraries to make sense of the data(extract keywords/classify) and do a query to Amazon web services to pull the results of the query.

We use searchindex=All and keywords=. Results are not always returned and we basically get 'AWS.ECommerceService.NoExactMatches' How to avoid that? 1) Is there a way to specify default results if no match found? e.g. Amazon carousel widget does that if the search query did not return results, it basically show some computer items. 2) Should I batch the request always and add another search criteria to every request? If my first criteria does not pull any results, we can be sure that our 2nd query will always pull results(possibly caching?)

Here is one search criteria 'Open Circle Hoop Earrings Polished Stainless Steel Open Circle Hoop Earrings Polished Stainless Steel DiamondShark' This return no results via API.

On Amazon site,I get alternative suggestions with some results which are pretty relevant. Is there a way to pull those results?

B. We just need a thumbnail image and a title and description for our app. Which responseGroup is appropriate? We are using medium rt now but there is awful lot of information even with that responseGroup.

Any help is appreciated. thanks

Answer 1

I can't answer all your questions, but there are a couple I can contribute:

A. Make sure you are using Operation=ItemSearch in your request. Also, I have found that using comma-separated values in the keywords when doing an ItemSearch works more reliably.

1) I haven't found anything that does this, but not to say it doesn't exist. You might have to create alternate searches by breaking up the keywords. But you can use the Similarities response group to pull similar items once you find at least one result.

B. The Images response group will return images at different sizes associated with the item. Note that it does not return any merchant-contributed images though.

Good luck!