Until last weekend, we had a confusing 3-tabbed search area which was overlayed on top of the map. Now we have a new search feature which I believe is easy to use and more streamlined, and I’d like to talk about it today. Basically, it’s a local search that asks 2 questions:
1) What are you looking for?
2) Where are you looking?
If you answer both questions, and our site recognizes your location, the map will travel to that location and proceed to search for whatever you typed in the first box. All relevant search results will be displayed, and you can click them either on the map or on the sidebar. Yay!
Notice there’s also an AND/OR designation. That means that we don’t require you to answer both questions. If you only want to tell us what you are looking for, we’ll just search for it in wherever you happen to be on the map. So, instead of answering question 2, you can just move to map to the place you want to search. Likewise, if you omit question 1, we’ll simply bring the map to the location that you specified so that you can look around on your own.
This gives our users a far more useful tool for searching our site. I encourage you to try out all the features it has to offer. Let us know if you have any ideas on how we can make it easier to use or more intuitive.
Max