Archaic Search is Unproductive

Are you used to typing in keywords and hitting the enter key? You’re probably
used to it because of Google Search–but have you ever wondered how you could
increase your productivity and user-experience in searching?

Let’s look at iTunes as an example for a really well-done search function.

“Search as you type” is great because it eliminates the need to sort-through the result set. If I wanted to find “Linkin Park”, I would type “Lin”–and the search application will automatically find the matches.

Advantages of “Search As You Type”

• Eliminates the need to sort
• Smaller result sets
• Cleaner user interface

Disadvantages of “Search As You Type”

• Performance in the back-end, using a lot of LIKE %keyword% in SQL
• User acceptance (for those who are used to archaic styles of searching)