About a year ago (2016) Aliexpress decided to cripple simplify their search engine. They’ve removed really useful search options and added (at least in my eyes) unnecessary ones.
These useful search options were removed from the search panel but they are still available as URL parameters. I’ve mainly written this post to document these missing options for my everyday searches — but I’m pretty sure others may find them useful as well.
| Parameter | Declaration | Description |
|---|---|---|
| isUnitPrice | y | Show Price per Piece |
| minQuantity | value | Minimal Quantity in Lot |
| maxQuantity | value | Maximal Quantity in Lot |
| minPrice | value (e.g. 1.23) | Minimum Price |
| maxPrice | value (e.g. 9.87) | Maximum Price |
| isFavorite | y | Results with 4+ Rating |
| isFreeShip | y | Free Shipping only |
| sortType | price_asc/price_desc | Ascending/Descending Prices |
| shipCountry | de/us/… | Destination Country |
| shipFromCountry | cn/de/us/… | Country of Origin |
Especially the option isUnitPrice is helpful when searching for the best price per piece and not price per lot. I really cannot understand why this option is not available per default.
So when I’m searching for the lowest price per piece within a certain quantity range (here: 10 – 50 pieces) with free shipping I would add to the URL (Example Search):
&minQuantity=10&maxQuantity=50&isUnitPrice=y&sortType=price_asc&isFreeShip=y
Side Note: It also makes a difference which keywords you are using when searching. The following three searches will (at least the last time I’ve checked) give different results:
- “stm32f103c8t6 lqfp“
- “stm32f103c8t6 lqfp48“
- “stm32f103c8t6 lqfp-48“
So even slight variations can make a big difference. Unlike the search on eBay, the search on Alibaba and Aliexpress does not split up keywords into smaller ‘chunks’ which are used for searching.
2018-08-02: Updated the List of Search Options
Very interesting!
Do you know how to exclude words from search? In the past, there was a box and you could use a negative sign before the word to exclude but now this doesn’t work any more. So frustrating!
“search whithin results” has gone?
Probably… I think they also modified the search API when switching to their new web (shop) frontend. Some search features still seem to work but I have to take a deeper look if there are ways (and if yes which ones) to improve the search requests.