Through Guided Navigation, a customer can find information about a particular product by describing the product more and more specifically until the description identifies a record or records that contain the desired product. To refine the product description in this way, a customer selects one or more dimension values, each of which provides a partial description of the product.

When the customer selects dimension values, records that are tagged to all currently selected dimension values are displayed in the results list. As the customer selects more and more dimension values, the number of records in the results list changes accordingly. When the partial descriptions together identify the record or records containing the desired product information (and exclude other records from consideration), the customer can select any one of these records to view information about a product.

The following screen shot illustrates how a customer can search for a specific product through Guided Navigation:

The results list shows product records for Fujifilm digital cameras costing between $250 and $500. To narrow the search this far, the customer has made the selections shown in the box labeled Your Selections in the upper left corner of the screen:

Any records that are tagged to all four of these dimension values will be displayed to the customer in the results list. The customer can then select these records to view information about one of the specific products, or further modify the results by selecting additional brand names, or ratings, or other qualifying values.

Your front end application determines how dimensions, dimension values, and records are displayed to customers.

To make the product records accessible through Guided Navigation, you must tag them to dimension values such as cameras, digital cameras, and so on. Untagged records are accessible only through keyword search. Similarly, a dimension value that is not tagged with at least one record will not appear in refinements lists.

More than one record can be tagged to the same dimension value. The number of records tagged to the dimension value is known as the dimension value's refinement count. The refinement count of a given dimension value is the total number of records tagged to the given dimension value, plus children of the given dimension value, children of the children, and so on to the leaf dimension values. For almost all purposes, it is best to tag records only to leaf dimension values.

The input that Guided Search provides to your front end application includes the refinement count for each dimension value in the refinement list. Your front end application can choose to display or not to display the refinement count.

For example, when a customerr clicks a dimension value named Women's, your application can display the refinement counts on any refinements that it chooses:

 Women's (19)
  Dresses (5)
  Sweaters (6)
  Swimwear (8)

or

Women's 
  Dresses (5)
  Sweaters (6)
  Swimwear (8)

or

Women's 
  Dresses 
  Sweaters 
  Swimwear

or any other choice of refinements to display as refinements counts.

If no records are tagged with a dimension value, that dimension value is not displayed in the list of refinements. For example, a dimension value named Skirts is not displayed in this example because the example assumes that no records are tagged to it.