Custom GE Search Results

Alongside my easier access to the Grand Exchange database, I've also been getting more involved in merchanting, by viewing the price changes of popular items, and buying at the right times, and selling at a profit. Although the actual profit is very minor for me now, it's because the profit grows exponentially as I gain more money. So although I may only get 100k by investing 10mil, when I get 100mil, that's 1mil profit. So at the very least, it's good practice, and fun. =D

Now, in order to help merchant, I worked on creating my own search results so I can view the price changes of important items. It's a pain to search herbs and get half a page of Herb Tea Mix. So what's the solution? Let me explain....

Nearly any search engine uses some basic search elements, especially "quotations". What quotations do is ONLY return results that match exactly what you put within the quotes. So if you did a search for Dragon Platebody on the GE Database, you'd get the Dragon Platebody, but also any other term with Dragon, and any other term with Platebody. This causes unnecessary clutter. So if you instead typed "Dragon Platebody", you'd only get that one result. Nice and clean.

So we know how to limit our results to what we want, but we don't want to create 500 different bookmarks, do we? Of course not! So how can we create a custom search results of differing items, on one page?

MOST search engines use Boolean Operators (AND/OR for examples), but since the GE database isn't as complex, it doesn't. So instead, we can simply put the next term following the previous, without any spaces. For instance, say I wanted a page result for just Dragon Full (Dragon Full Helm, Dragon Platebody, Platelegs, and Square Shield). Instead of having 4 different bookmarks, I can do one search like this:

"Dragon platebody""Dragon platelegs""Dragon full helm""Dragon sq shield"

and get this result:

http://itemdb-rs.runescape.com/results.ws?query=%22Dragon%20platebody%22%22Dragon%20platelegs%22%22Dragon%20full%20helm%22%22Dragon%20sq%20shield%22&price=all&members=

Now note the armour set and the corrupt sets. I don't want these in my results, since I want to merchant the individual items (The armour sets probably won't have that many in stock anyways). So at the end of the search, I'll make an adjustment by adding -corrupt -set.

Now my search should look like this:

"Dragon platebody""Dragon platelegs""Dragon full helm""Dragon sq shield" -corrupt -set

And here's what I get!

http://services.runescape.com/m=itemdb_rs/results.ws?query=%22Dragon+platebody%22%22Dragon+platelegs%22%22Dragon+full+helm%22%22Dragon+sq+shield%22+-corrupt+-set&price=all&members=

Brilliant! Now I just bookmark that page, and set the keyword as ge1. Now whenever I want to see what the prices of the day are for a Dragon Set, I can just type ge1 in my address bar, and there it is. =)

I personally have set up 13 different custom results, for things ranging from runes, ores and bars, food, logs, herbs, potions, seeds, barrows armour, weapons, and armour. Considering I have the ge search set up as "ge [termhere]", I have to make sure that my keywords DO NOT have a space after ge; therefore, it MUST be ge1, and not ge 1.

So if you have any interest in merchanting, be sure to set up some custom results so you can get a quick handle on the daily price changes. =D Trust me, it'll save you HOURS of time.