Improving Site Search

Hi,

I'm just wondering if there are any projects under way or modules that make the site search .... more functional (for want of a better phrase). I think (?) the actual term is faceted search.

What would be great is to give our visitors flexibility to improve on their existing search. There are some categories or sub-cats that have lots of varieties of the same basic product.

Allowing the visitor pre sort or sort and refine word by word and by attribute as part of the search, presented as individual drop downs or a nice slinky, sliding AJAX ... thingy would be effective :)

Any thoughts on how to improve searchability to improve sales?
Any pointers to how Zen Cart search function currently works would be great.

TIA

Kevin Polley

I have the opposite problem: I would like the search return an exact keyword, so that I can let customers find hidden categories.
I want to use HideCategories to have some privacy protection for photos I have for sale.

Any hints as to how I can achieve that?