How To: Refine Your Search
We have built our search tools to be extremely powerful, and yet as easy to use as possible for less technically savvy guests. Even with all our efforts, guests may still be unsure of how a tool works, or even confused by the description used to describe a tool.
The primary tool on theGOspot that we have received the most feedback about, is the ’Refine Search’ button found on the search results pages. The page you are now on is an effort to clearly illustrate and explain how this powerful tool works in order to enable you to find the events you are looking for more quickly and more accurately.
Refining Your Search
When you execute a search on theGOspot, either via the keyword Search Bar at the top-left of the site, by using the Date -> City -> Venue -> Event GOtabs© option, or by choosing one of the green Quick Search Links categories, you are presented with page(s) of results matching your request.
Searches may present dozens or even hundreds of events, and sometimes it is necessary to ’refine’ your search in order to more accurately pinpoint the event(s) you are looking for.
By clicking the green ’Refine Search’ button on the ’Search Results’ pages, you will be presented with a window containing columns of checkboxes and category names.
Most events will be associated with more than one category. For example:
’The Magician’s Nephew’ is associated with three(3) categories:
- Family
- Music & Arts
- Theatre: Play
’Neal McCoy Concert’ is associated with three(3) categories:
- Family
- Music & Arts
- Music: Country
’Monster Truck Rally’ is associated with three(3) categories:
- Family
- Outdoors
- Racing
When refining a search, if only one category is checked, the ’ANY’ and ’ALL’ options at the top of this refining tool won’t come into play. However, if more than one category is checked, choosing ’ANY’ or ’ALL’ will affect the search results considerably.
Using the three above examples, if the categories ’family’ and ’music & arts’ are checked, and ’ANY’ is selected it would produce the following result:
- The Magician’s Nephew
- Neal McCoy Concert
- Monster Truck Rally
The Magician’s Nephew was selected because it was associated with ’family’ and ’music & arts’, and the same is true for Neal McCoy Concert.
Monster Truck Rally was found because it was also associated with ’family’, and since ’ANY’ was selected, it did not matter that it was not associated with ’music & arts’.
In the event ’ALL’ was selected usig the exact same category selections, it would have produced the following results:
- The Magician’s Nephew
- Neal McCoy Concert
The Monster Truck Rally is not associated with ’music & arts’, and since the searcher wanted only events to be found matching ’ALL’ categories selected, only those associate with ’ALL’ of them qualified.
By simply using the tool a few times, it will become more clear to most guests if you’re still having trouble with this feature.
