All items found in search results

[ids]

I am being asked to only show ALL results found on the search results template page without filtering. I've not had this request before and seems counter intuitive to me. One main idea of the search being to reduce the list of items available with the criteria. (duh!) But, I don't know the best practice with the reasons. Could there be an SEO reason? I know they have been working with an SEO consultant. I've been trying to research this but have not found any results on the google machine. Some of the more popular articles I've found mention nothing about showing all results in the criteria given. Instead, the emphasis was to try to find techniques to the most accurate results which will by design be limited.

My advise will be to set the default to ALL but keep the filtering options so a customer could at least list by pricing etc. Any other ideas about any of this?

Thanks,

Scott

[Mark Hood]

Re: All items found in search results

I am being asked to only show ALL results found on the search results template page without filtering. I've not had this request before and seems counter intuitive to me. One main idea of the search being to reduce the list of items available with the criteria. (duh!) But, I don't know the best practice with the reasons. Could there be an SEO reason? I know they have been working with an SEO consultant. I've been trying to research this but have not found any results on the google machine. Some of the more popular articles I've found mention nothing about showing all results in the criteria given. Instead, the emphasis was to try to find techniques to the most accurate results which will by design be limited.

My advise will be to set the default to ALL but keep the filtering options so a customer could at least list by pricing etc. Any other ideas about any of this?

Thanks,

Scott

I'm with you advice on this one because I can't imagine this being a great idea so at least your method would be easy to reverse.

[ids]

Re: All items found in search results

Thanks Mark. This is the plan -- to keep the filters while changing the default to All.

Turns out this client gets response from their customers, "I went to this category and you only have 10 product options." When in reality the category has 100 and unknown are the controls for pagination and filtering. Confusing still to some generations from what I am surmising.

Scott

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: All items found in search results

<soapbox>
I believe the segment of the population who can not navigate web sites is actually GROWING, because more and more sites are being designed to appeal to genxers and millennials...the baby boomers, who may have just finally gotten on board with understanding the web are back at square one. (They don't make the UI connections between Mobil navigation and the web...and heck, they can still hardly send a text message to their kids.) So, I suspect we'll see more of these issues has everyone gets on the latest round of "cool" designs...
</soapbox>