Search!

I agree - there should definitely be a /programmes search (which searches the actual database, not the webpages).

The /food portal has a 'recipe search' after all, which seems similar to this problem:

Well, why doesn't 'Search' adapt to it's context then? Or something. I'm fed up of having to use the letter list to find a programme after accidentally trying to use the search box...

It doesn't need to be in the header search, it could be a second search box, though that's somewhat confusing. There aren't many (any?) other websites that make you use letter lists to find things in a database...

The site has some support for searching by programme title: just put the search string on the end of http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/a-z/by/

For example, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/a-z/by/food

You can filter by service, or by type of service, by putting something like "bbcone", "radio4", or "tv" or "radio", in front of the /programmes path, eg http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/programmes/a-z/by/food. And you can further refine the search by adding "all", "current" (the implicit default), or "player" to the end of the URL, to show every result, results with broadcasts +/- 7 days from now, or results with episodes available in iPlayer, respectively. Or just click the links next to the "Filter: " label once you have the initial set of results.

A slight variation on this is that you can put the search string on the end of http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ to be redirected to /programmes/a-z/by/.../all, or directly to the programme page if there was only one result. For example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/food and http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/thearchers

Alternatively, there's a Greasemonkey script here which changes the search box on the programmes A-Z pages to use the /programmes/a-z/by/... URLs. (Not endorsed or supported by the BBC, etc.)

bbc search used to be contexual. the trouble was how you define context. if you're looking at a radio 2 programme is the context all of radio 2 or all programmes. so it switched back to being an all bbc search.
2 search boxes are seen in some places (eg recipes) but users tend to find them confusing - what does one do that the other doesn't
you can now do:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/archers
if that helps

bbc search used to be contexual. the trouble was how you define context. if you're looking at a radio 2 programme is the context all of radio 2 or all programmes. so it switched back to being an all bbc search.
2 search boxes are seen in some places (eg recipes) but users tend to find them confusing - what does one do that the other doesn't
you can now do:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/archers
if that helps

That's useful to know. Perhaps whoever is in-charge of barlesque (Mat Hampson?) could consider adding a way to choose to search specific areas of the site, either tabs or a drop down/popup menu. I can't believe I'm the only one who accidentally tries to use the very prominent search box to search /programmes. I imagine someone in the BBC could find some stats on this...

Looks like Search is due for an upgrade soon anyway...

I've made (what I think is) a nice hack for the bbc site that adds various different searches to the standard BBC search box. You can see some screenshots on my embryonic blog: http://www.edwinlyons.com/ - feedback would be much appreciated!

I'll post the script itself tomorrow (4am now!)... It should work on most Barlesque pages, though amazingly almost every one I've found is different, often for no apparent reason, with News using 'blq-popular' as a css tag and /programmes using 'blq-pop'... surely they must originate from the same code?!

Here we go: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/3...

I agree that contextual search (or having 2 search boxes) can both be confusing, and that this is hard thing to get right (having seen some user testing in the area myself). Adding extra options to search boxes (search 'all' or 'programmes') just makes it even more confusing.

Ultimately you need one search box, and then to somehow return exactly what the user was looking for. Perhaps this means adding biases so that programmes show up slightly higher when searching from /programmes, or perhaps it just means making the search work damn well and using a combination of previous popular searches and editorial picks to make sure that the right results come up first.

Good luck!

Well, my 'solution' (www.edwinlyons.com) is reasonable for 'power users' (like us), but for your average user I agree that providing options just confuses the matter. I'd follow Google's lead and integrate everything into one search result page and use powerful heuristics to sort it based on the context of the search. This could just be confusing though... Perhaps a combination of both would be desireable - a main SRP that shows the combined results plus tabs (or equivalent) that shows specific areas (e.g. /programmes)...

P.S The other place that scoped search REALLY needs to happen is on the BBC News website - where the search box searches all of bbc.co.uk and then you have to select 'news' after. Sooo frustrating, I might have to post that as a separate request...