What should your own search facility do

[andylong]

Our online advertising and internet marketing site
needs a really well designed and fully functional search box across many
different pages. What do people think about search boxes having a drop down box for each main section/category and does anyone have any really good design ideas for search boxes? Cheers,

Online advertising and internet marketing at http://www.myadbase.com

[Wistow]

I'd stay away from category boxes as they 'restrict' a search too much, e.g. a user may search for 'test' in the 'test' category and the search would only return occurrences of 'test' in that category rather than all categories.

If you did go with the category boxes, include a drop-down choice for the whole site.

A search function is simple to implement using MySQL and Php

Hope this helps,

Craig