We’ve actually taken a hybrid approach to our filters – we surface the top five filter options for each category and have a “more options” link so users can see the additional filtering criteria for each category. We have received good feedback from our users on this new approach and have actually witnessed users using the filters with ease during usability tests.

Currently this new filtered search is available only to our subscribers, but based on the good response we will be rolling it out to our free site users in the near future.

Filtering on results pages puts advance search tools in the hands of basic search users. With user literacy with rich interfaces improving everyday, there’s no reason we can’t take advantage of search results interfaces that progressively provide more advanced filtering for intermediate and advanced users.

On a previous enterprise GIMONGOUS intranet search project, this approach tested very well. And since it helped 100% of users (as opposed to the limited percentage of advanced search users), it was a more effective design as well.

Thanks for a great post!

old school advanced search was perilously close to forcing users to understand and/or but not = to constructions

new models bake it in from the beginning: call it faceted search, or call it submenus defined by higher level menu reults, or wizards; it all tunes the response to the query

examples: genres/sub genres/sub sub for music and recipes by meal part/main ingred/cuisine for cooking

carry on

I’m sure others would be as interested as I in hearing about your experience managing advanced search on your site. For example, what % of searches were “advanced”?

I am cautious about Austin’s comment, though, concerning our rich interface literacy improving, especially regarding the functionality. Indeed this is true for technologically-advanced societies. But members of emerging economies or cultures different from our own may be confounded by much of the interactivity we take for granted. Simple navigation in a western-influenced onscreen environment may be a challenge, let alone the semantic nuance of how we’ve imposed our thought processes on the functionality. In other words, other cultures interact with one another and their environment differently that we do–and that interaction style may not translate to the onscreen search functionality we design/create.

On the plus side, it gives members from a differing or emerging culture a chance to explore and understand how we think about things, thus they are better able to take advantage of opportunities to interact with us. Admittedly, it’s technologically imperialistic on our part, though frankly a realistic trend. Perhaps in the mean time we should consider a middle ground for our presence within those countries or cultures: searches and filtering “implemented in a way that is more specific to the context” as Chris says. As the economic or cultural relationship evolves, we can, as Austin suggests, provide a progressive filtering responsive to 100% of the demographic. Moving through the search results is progressive—honing thoughts and ideas to an exact and purposeful result. Why not make learning about the nature of searching itself progressive, honing an exact and purposeful search process for a given demographic?

~ Context is critical in search. In web search, no matter how hard you try to get more data out of the user, or get them to refine results, you can’t. You wouldn’t be believe how many different interfaces and approaches have been tried to get “one more word” out of users. However, in other areas like travel and real estate, users will happily fill out multiple fields to get better results.

~ Refining results is a different concept than formulating a better query, and should be used in conjunction. Only a small subject of users want to form complex queries, such as librarians and scientists. The numbers on advanced search are never going to go up, at least with web search, because the one-box metaphor is the desired metaphor. Mind reading is expected. Google has a half dozen designers working on search, Yahoo the same. Why do you suppose they don’t try new things? The answer is they do, and those things fail repeatedly.

for example, have you noticed this refinement tool? I bet they tried dozens of implementations, including open, closed, different background colors, etc all done with bucket testing and this one won… and I’ll bet (no insider knowledge here) it gets less than 1% usage even as the most effective implementation.

Are you familiar with Amanda Spink’s body of work? More users would rather switch search engines than refine their query or even go to the second page.

~ Filtering results via classification (tags, categories, etc) works well with structured data and an environment where users are accustomed to it, such as in shopping.

So I think you raise really important questions and make some great suggestions, but without scoping it to both the type of user and the context of the site, it could lead to some dubious design decisions.

I agree that this idea doesn’t solve all advanced search problems, particularly your problem of web searching, given the lack of meta data search engines have at their disposal. Other people, such as some of the commenters, may find it useful.

I’m not sure I agree with the idea that all the ideas have been tried, and that UX people should simply follow what search engines do. Indeed as Amanda Spink writes in your interview “One major problem is that [designers of] search engines tend to think that one technique will do it!” As any UX person knows, what gets built is the result of many opinions and business needs, not only what the UX team recommends.

The example you show, although unrelated in function to this article, does highlight some of the practices I was trying to get at in the article. This feature does appear in the user’s standard path, which is excellent. However, it is hardly visible. Much like traditional advanced search, I doubt many users even see it, which must reduce usage. On the page, http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=sopa+de+lima one doesn’t see those suggestions at all. (They are hidden within a triangle icon thingy) If you do open it, the feature doesn’t communicate a benefit to the user (What does “explore concepts” mean anyway?). I agree that it probably gets very little usage, but have to suspect that if it wasn’t hidden and was clearly explained it would get more.

Interestingly, I see that since I started writing the article Yahoo has dropped advanced search from its home page altogether. On search results pages it is hidden under an “options” menu, (which strikes me as a dubious design decision.) Given the experience of the many people working on it, do you recommend we all do the same?