Introducing Yuh Gettin' Tru: The Search Engine Barbados Has Been Waiting For
"Yuh gettin' tru?"
If you live in Barbados, you hear this phrase every time you walk into a store. It's the Bajan way of asking, "Are you being served?" or "Can I help you find what you're looking for?"
When I first moved here in 2021 on the Welcome Stamp, I had no idea what people were asking me! But today, that phrase has become the name of a project that answers that question for the entire island.
I'm thrilled to announce the official launch of Yuh Gettin' Tru, a new search engine built specifically for Barbados.
The Problem: The Saturday Morning Runaround
The idea was born out of frustration—specifically, a kitchen renovation.
I was looking for a specific size of bolt. I knew someone on the island had it. But finding out who meant checking Kooyman's website, then Carter's, then H&B's, then Do It Best... and often, the search results on those sites were less than helpful. I'd search for a "table saw" and get results for glue and tape.
I ended up doing what we all do: driving from store to store, wasting gas and time, only to find the item was out of stock or overpriced.
I thought, "There has to be a better way."
The Solution: Google Shopping for Barbados
Yuh Gettin' Tru is an aggregator that brings together inventory from 43 major retailers across Barbados. That's over 230,000 products searchable in one place.
From building materials at Kooyman to swimsuits at Sea Reinas, and even locally made chocolate from Agapey, we've indexed it all.
But we didn't just copy-paste the product lists. We built something smarter.
Smarter Search with AI
One of the biggest challenges with local e-commerce is that every store describes things differently. If you search for "cutlery" (the UK term), you might miss results labeled "flatware" (the US term).
Yuh Gettin' Tru uses semantic search powered by AI. It understands the meaning of your search, not just the keywords.
- Search for "hardwood chopping board", and we'll show you "teak cutting boards".
- Search for "cutlery", and we'll find "flatware".
The system analyzes product images and descriptions to understand what the item actually is, fixing the "glue and tape" problem I faced with my table saw search.
Under the Hood
For the tech-curious, the entire platform is built in Python. We use a three-stage pipeline:
1. Crawl: We visit store websites daily to fetch the latest pages. 2. Extract: We pull out the key details—price, title, availability. 3. Enhance: We use AI to analyze the product and create rich descriptions.
When you search, we use a hybrid approach combining vector search (for meaning) and keyword search (for precision), followed by an AI re-ranker that explains why a result matches your query.
What's Next?
This launch is just the beginning. We're already seeing great traction—244 searches in the first 24 hours of our soft launch!
Our roadmap includes:
- Adding more stores (we're constantly discovering new ones).
- Working directly with retailers to help them improve their own data.
- Expanding to other Caribbean islands. Barbados is our home, but the problem of fragmented retail exists across the region.
Start Searching
Whether you're a local looking for the best price on a TV, or a visitor trying to find a specific brand of sunscreen, Yuh Gettin' Tru is here to help.
Stop driving. Start searching.