I was messing around with the new Photoshop Express gizmo today and I clicked the help link.
It opened a new window to this page which looks like this screenshot (for those who dun wanna click.)
Hopefully you can see that search box in the upper right of the page. If you’re looking for help, don’t search there. 
That is the search box in the header of every page of Adobe.com (well, most every.)
In many cases, putting a search box in the header of every page is a good idea. When it’s a bad idea is when you’re on a page with its own specialized search, like the help page for Photoshop Express.
On this Photoshop Express Support Center page, the knowledge base search is below the fold. Below. The. Fold. (inexcusable)
Ok, so there are 2 Major things wrong here:
- Don’t put a site wide search box at the top of a subject domain search page.
- Put the search of a knowledge base above the fold of the help home page
Nielson has lots of data about how many users are search centric and how many web users scan quickly for the first search box they can find. On this page, that strategy would fail because they’d be searching the overall Adobe.com site. Oops!
There is a simple solution. Make the site wide search contextual and don’t display it on pages such as the Support Center home page which have their own, highly specific search functions.
