Amazon API Question

Hey amazon peoples, I have a bunch of eBay stores and wanted to test my hand at amazon. I signed up for the associates program, and an account with the Amazon Web Services, got my access key. I am using PHP and want to fetch data via REST.

What would I like to do is a standard keyword query, like 'ipod video' or 'gone with the wind'. I have read through some of the examples and the best route seems to be the ItemSearch operation. In all my testing though you are required to pass a SearchIndex. Some of my sites are more keyword based than category based, is there any way to determine SearchIndex by keyword or pass an 'all' value?

 

Unfortunately, I believe that there is no way to search for items (other than ItemLookup which is no use without an ASIN) without specifying a SearchIndex - it's an irritating limitation of the Amazon API, though it does help you narrow down results too.

If you look at what these guys have done though, my guess is that they have cached (and regularly update) the entire BrowseNode tree for all the search indices, and then they can search on keywords in their own database of browsenodes and work back to a SearchIndex that way, since there are browsenodes for most brands and titles you can think of. Try typing "Gone with the Wind" in the search, for example.

Pretty cumbersome though, and not always accurate, since if you type "Hoover", you are just as likely to get stuff about J. Edgar as the household appliance...

Me, I think it's better if for every site you can somehow specify a general SearchIndex, or more than one, since they ARE very broad categories.