101 UX Principles

Chapter #82. Categorize Search Results into Sections

Google is so good at ranking search results that users have come to expect this level of quality from all their search experiences. Unfortunately, the "out-of-the-box" site search on many modern web platforms is a little lacking. You will need to work hard on your product, and consider the whole search experience deeply, to deliver the kind of quality your users expect.

Don't return all the search results for a term in one huge list:

Cat spoon

Cat bed

Cat t-shirt

Cat food 500g

Cat food 1kg

Instead, split the results into sections—shorter lists help users to parse information more quickly, and they can skip to the section that's relevant to them:

Pet supplies (3)	Apparel (1)	Homeware (1)
Cat food ...