Search Beyond Part Numbers

Created: October 27, 2017
Updated: July 1, 2024

Octopart has always supported a variety of methods to search for parts: full or partial MPNs, SKUs, manufacturer name, and description. Search is a key part of the Octopart experience and it's something we're constantly improving to make sure users get the best information.

Last week, we launched an upgrade to our ranking function that improves the quality of results for descriptive searches. When you know what you want, but not the part number, try a descriptive search on Octopart.

Here are some example searches that have improved with this upgrade:

Searching for a standard multimeter: multimeter
Searching for a green surface-mount LED in package 0805: LED SMD green 0805
Searching for a low dropout 5V 1A regulator: LDO 5V 1A
Searching for a transistor by attributes: transistor NPN 300 mA
Searching for power supplies: power supply
Searching for a new operational amplifier: op amp

There are of course many other possible searches and ways to do the above searches. Searching by natural terms and attributes is now an excellent way to find parts on Octopart.

We also made an important change to our search syntax: to exclude a word, use the NOT keyword rather than a leading dash. For example, search led smd NOT red rather than "led smd -red." We made this change because we observed that it was common to accidentally exclude a word by prepending a dash. For more detail see our Search Syntax Help.

[caption id="attachment_3278" align="alignnone" width="720"] Now it's easy to find a multimeter on Octopart.com[/caption]

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