Hulu has made a few changes to how it presents its search results, as well as the site’s “most popular” and “recently added” pages. Most noticeably, Hulu has abandoned the two-column approach in favor of a more “prominent placement of the show Hulu thinks you are looking for.
“You can subscribe to the show, check on its availability, and get a brief description of the show, but you can easily pinpoint a specific episode using the browse tools to the upper right of the results,” explains Rebecca H. on the Hulu Blog.
“For current shows, such as Better Off Ted or America’s Got Talent, we’ll default the most recent episode; for older shows, like Miami Vice,, we’ll highlight the pilot episode (or the first episode we have if the pilot is unavailable),” she continues. “You can browse through the episodes available there, or scroll down the page to check out all the videos that match your search.”
Search results can be refined through filter menus. You can display only clips or full episodes. You can also sort by relevance, airdate, or by shows with closed captioning. The changes have also been implemented on the Most Popular and Recently Added pages.
In addition, when there are multiple clips or more than one episode from a season of a show, they are now displayed in collapsed entries that can be expanded when clicked. Finally, the time-based search feature in Hulu Labs now offers the ability to search for videos based on date, then use the video type filter to display clips or full episodes only.
