Flat searches are also very important not just for list owners, but also for other people who are visiting/reading large public lists. In my case, I’ve created a HUGE “library” of public resources, and there are several problems with using the current search box:
- The search takes a long time to deliver results. In fact, sometimes the search results never even resolve.
- When the search does resolve, the resulting list is extremely hard to review since much of the content is very deeply nested, and lots of extraneous ‘parent’ content makes it extremely difficult for the reader to find the term they were originally searching for.
This is why I’ve told my readers to use CTRL+K instead of the search box. It delivers a much cleaner, shorter list that is much easier to review.
But this is only a workaround, since many readers are likely to miss my recommendation about the CTRL+K search option. It would be far better if the search box itself delivered up the clean and simple list of bullets that a flat search would provide.
Better still would be a flat search result with a clickable icon that could open the parent context, IF this is was something the reader wanted to see. My guess, though, is that most readers wouldn’t even need to see this additional info, so access to the hidden parent context would only be nice-to-have, not necessary, IMHO.