The And/Or/Not Search Interface

With the recent update/upgrade to the search interface at iStockphoto, the user interface guys slipped in a little something that might help you when making search queries.  It is not immediately obvious, so I thought I’d point it out.Under the “Narrow Your Search” title, and next to “Keyword(s)” is a small arrow.  Clicking that will open up 3 radio boxes offering you the “and/or/not” options for adding search refinements.

This may be helpful for people who may not be sure of what terminology they need to construct a search.  For example, say you want to see images of men with dogs, but no women.  You could use those buttons to create a set of refining terms like:

  • men
  • dog
  • NOT women

Now, they are still having issues with how these terms are actually interpreted by the search engine.  I’ve found that entering those three terms above return zero results, even though from the 3700 results showing men with dogs, apparently, there are none that don’t have women in them.  Which of course isn’t right, so something is still buggy.  However, for two word searches, it seems to work fine, so that is a start.

Also, you cannot start your search with a “NOT”.  The modifiers have to come after another term.  So, again, these are refinements to an existing search, not a way to start a new search.  Which kind of makes sense when you think about it.

 

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