Magento _searchCriterias cannot be changed - magento

Question

I'm building a custom search results page, and I have the IDs of all products that have to be included in the results. I want to override the default search criteria, and yes, I can override $this->_searchCriterias, but it does not change the results page itself.
This is my custom code of CatalogSearch/Model/Advanced.php
public function getSearchCriterias()
{
$search = $this->_searchCriterias;
var_dump($search);
$search = array();
if(isset($_GET['productid'])) {
$value = $this->getIdsFromSearchUrl($_GET['productid']);
if(is_array($value)){
foreach($value as $v){
if(is_numeric($v)){
$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($v);
var_dump($product->getId());
$search[] = array('name'=>'Name','value'=>$product->getName());
}
}
} else {
if(is_numeric($value)){
$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($value);
$search[] = array('name'=>'Name','value'=>$product->getName());
}
}
}
var_dump($search);
$this->_searchCriterias = $search;
return $search;
}
Any help appreceated.

Answer 1

The way I understand is that you want the site to always include some "featured products", which are not necessarily related to the search term.
I would suggest an alternative method instead of tampering with the search engine logic:
Create a block and template for displaying featured products.
Add the block to Search engine result page inside the product_list block (under catalogsearch_result_index)
Modify list.phtml and echo out the child block you just added.
Let me know if this helps.