Best design for search, from a user perspective. Pre or post search selection?

Question

This is a question on how to best design the search experience for users of a CMS based system. It's on a intranet system. The users needs to be able to filter the search results based on where the document/information is located, and to have the ability to search/filter on other meta data such as author, creation date amongst other fields.

What I have in mind is to wheter let the users filter on this before they click on search, or have them filter on the result on the result page after the search has been executed. The latter would probably be designed using a Ajax based mechanism that updates the resul in real time based on their selection.

What are your thoughts? What would be the best usability experience from a user perspective?

This is regarding the Advanced Search page on the system. There exists a simple search web control also, but this is on how to deign the advanced search.

Answer 1

I would say both. Let them specify as many fields as they want initially, then add as many as they want later. If you're worried about cluttering the GUI, you can have an Advanced Search view or a toggle to show/hide the filters.

Answer 2

I know it's boring and probably trivializes your situation, but what about the google approach? I mean one input field for all your problems. If you need more you can select some fields on an advanced page, but in most cases a simple search should do? I probably would split up the user input and take a look at every string. Could this be a fon number? Could this be a zip?.. I think you get the idea, if possible don't overwhelm the user with the UI. One more thing: What about the google/bing idea, but with checkboxes for the different fields instead of radiobuttons?