Thank you, Chris. That's very helpful. I managed to use the URL to search for documents that use our contract template which is pretty cool.

Still, it's not quite what I was looking for unfortunately.

More specifically, I was wondering if you can pass URL parameters when you first load the search page to pre-set things in the search form. The page you linked to shows how to perform a search using the parameters. I'm just trying to pre-set items in the search form without performing the actual search. 

For example, I could load the search form with the contracts template already selected in the template menu and then wait for the user to fill it any other fields and initiate the search. I suppose this would take creating a custom page with that item already selected in the page code.