Power Search Syntax
The individual parts of a power search query are of the following form
key:value
For example, the following query string searches for books authored by Davenport.
author:Davenport
Values are not case sensitive. So, "Davenport" returns the same books as "davenport."
The individual parts of a power search query are linked together using a variety of operators. The following example searches for all books authored by Davenport that were published during 2006.
author:Davenport and pubdate:during 2006
Other operators, such as parentheses, can be used to create additional
specificity. For example, a query of subject:history and (spain or mexico) and
not military and language:spanish would return a list of books in the
Spanish language on the subject of either Spanish or
Mexican
history, excluding all items with military in their description.
These parameter values would be part of an ItemSearch request
that used the Power parameter, as shown in the
following example.
http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml? Service=AWSECommerceService& AWSAccessKeyId=[ID]& Operation=ItemSearch& SearchIndex=Books&Power=subject:history%20and%20(spain%20or%20mexico)%20and%20not%20military%20and%20language:spanish
Note that spaces must be URL-encoded (%20) as shown.
Power Search Keywords
Power search queries are created using one or more keyword:value pairs. The keywords you can use in a power search are described in the following table.
| Keyword | Description |
|---|---|
| after | Restricts the results to books published after the specified date. This keyword is used with pubdate, for example, pubdate:after 2006. |
| ASIN | An alphanumeric token that uniquely identifies a book. |
| author | Book’s author. |
| author-begins | Author's name begins with this value. |
| author-exact | Authors name is exactly this value. |
| binding | Searches for books with the specified binding. Values for binding include abridged and large print. |
| during | Searches for books that were published during the time period specified. This keyword is used with pubdate, for example, pubdate:during 2006. |
| ISBN | International Standard Book Number of the book. |
| keywords | Words that can be found in the title or description of a book. |
| keywords-begin | Search for all words tat begin with this value. |
| language | Language, such as Spanish, that the book is written in. |
| pubdate | Book’s publication date. |
| publisher | Name of the book’s publisher. |
| subject | Find books with the specified word in their subject description. |
| subject-begins | Find books whose subject description begins with this word or character. |
| subject-words-begin | Find books whose subject description begins with these words |
| title | Title of the book. |
| title-begins | Title of the book begins with this value exactly. This value does not mean "begins with," it means "begins." For the example, if the value is "I", the book, "I Lied," would be returned; the book, "Isabel," would not be returned. |
| title-words-begin | Title of the book begins with this word. |
Example Power Searches
The following five Power Search examples demonstrate many of the key words and operators.
author: ambrose and binding: (abridged or large print) and pubdate: after 11-1996
subject: history and (Spain or Mexico) and not military and language: Spanish
(subject: marketing and author: kotler) or (publisher: harper and subject: "high technology")
keywords: "high tech*" and not fiction and pubdate: during 1999
isbn: 0446394319 or 0306806819 or 1567993850