42matters, the makers of our beloved app collection and recommendation service Playboard, have just released another tool that will make searching the Play Store a hundred times more efficient and customizable: App Market Explorer.

App Market Explorer is still a beta service, but it trumps the Play Store search by leaps and bounds. Not only can you pick a keyword to search for, but you can narrow down your search by multiple other criteria like:

• Keyword in the title or the description as well
• Package name and developer name
• Play Store category
• Price and in-app purchases
• Rating and rating count
• Downloads
• Size
• Release and update date
• Content rating
• Price drops
• Apps with english description only, or with a video demo.

The list of results auto-updates as you make your selections and you can even order the results by several different sort methods. Here’s a demo of the App Market Explorer at work:

I tried a couple of searches for generic keywords that normally get me absolutely nowhere on the Play Store, like “exercise” or “recipe” or “cocktail” or “food”, and on each of these I was able to narrow down the results to a small list that was manageable and much closer to my expectations than what the Play Store provides. For example, “recipe” yields 23 results if you only want free apps, with no IAP, rated 4 stars and above and updated in the last month.

If you’re looking for this kind of specific search result, or if you’re lost searching in the meanders of the Play Store, give App Market Explorer a try. It’s free for now and quite useful.