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I don't often do searches, but when I do, I find the experience less than optimal. I'm primarily interested in SFF, more fantasy than SF.
My primary use is searching specific authors (I'm slowly replacing physical books with electronic editions) so I generally want to see exact results as I'm after reverted backlist titles. I'm not usually interested in partial matches here - if I'm checking Sherwood Smith, I don't want to see other authors whose names include Sherwood or Smith. On the other hand, S N Lewitt also uses Shariann Lewitt, and Brenda Clough also uses B W Clough, so I'm not sure what to suggest; perhaps consider combining authors? Looking in my library favourites, some authors have 2 or more individual entries:
Melissa Scott x 3 & Melissa Scott Amy Griswold
Mike Resnick x 2
Nancy Kress x 2
S N Lewitt & Shariann Lewitt
Sherwood Smith x 2
(Talking about favourite authors, please consider a direct link in the 'your account' dropdown menu - I have to hunt for the list every time!)
I don't find tag searching at all useful; there's too many results because authors throw tags around like confetti. Ditto genre searches; about the only time I use that is during the sales, and I usually stick to a fairly high level. What I would find useful is being able to select a tag or genre, and be able to see the author list who have a book with that tag or genre, and then I could go into the list of titles by that author.
The ability to limit the search to titles in a specific language, and also to exclude any titles translated into that language (i.e. the primary language only).
Hope this gives some ideas.
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