Mastering Search in Affiliate.com’s API: 'Like' vs. 'Equal'

Affiliate.com’s API provides advanced search capabilities, including "like" and "equal" searches, enabling precise or expansive product discovery.

A like search broadens results by including similar and related products, increasing the chances of discovering more options.

This approach offers greater flexibility, allowing you to explore a wider range of products without needing an exact match. It’s ideal for finding alternatives, variations, and related items, providing more opportunities to uncover the available products.

For example search for products that have a name like or similar to "American Tourister Luggage."

This query returns results from multiple merchants, showcasing various product variations such as different colors, sizes, styles, and more. 

An equal search, on the other hand, delivers precise results by returning only exact matches to your query.

Equal searches help ensure accuracy and eliminating unrelated products as an equal search will return only the products that match the exact search criteria you have entered.

For example, an equal search for a specific product such as "American Tourister Burst Max Quatro Hardside Spinner Luggage, Silver" will show products with this exact product name.

This will not return any similar or related products.

Affiliate.com’s API gives you the flexibility to search for products whether you want to explore more options with a "like" search or zero in on exact matches with an "equal" search.

For more information, visit https://www.affiliate.com/programmatic-apis.