[Tagdb] vertical search, strong typing amd multi-field queries

[Nitin Borwankar]

Slightly unrelated to tags/folksonomy but only slightly.

In my current consulting a recurring issue is that of search.
(A tag bundle can be used as a filter to reduce search scope and then we 
can do raw text or other searches.  But that is a separate topic .... )

I'd like to ask the list about the current dogma about providing a 
single search field with the belief that non-technical users find 
multiple fields too complicated and they will "leave" -  this belief is 
predominant in the major search engine companies.  There is also a UI 
dogma that simplicity is better and this dogma often dominates common 
sense approaches driven by the structure of underlying data.

See www.simplyhired.com for an example of a site that has moved away ( 
slightly ) from the single field dogma. 

I find the single query field appropriate for horizontal search engines 
like Google etc. where the query could be about anything.
But what if I am at a site that has say book information - does it make 
sense to provide a single field or does a set of fields 
title/author/publisher/....
make more sense?  When we have domain specialization for search i.e. 
vertical search, is it automatic that we also have strong typing of 
underlying data and hence multi-field search? Does a single field ( 
typeless query ) make sense for a vertical search engine.


Nitin Borwankar.