Assuming you want to update your search results asynchronously I would use the SurfaceController and corresponding view/model to render the form to take advantage of Validation and all that good stuff.

The form would then be hooked up to post to an API Controller, I would pass the model via an AJAX request to the search method.

There is some info about passing multiple parameters / models to Web API here: http://techbrij.com/pass-parameters-aspdotnet-webapi-jquery

Like this:

$.ajax({
 url: '/umbraco/api/cars/search',
 type: 'POST',
 data: { year: 2012, Make: 'Audi', Model: 'A3' },
 dataType: 'json',
 success: function (data) {
                   ...
  }
}); 

The search method consumes the data passed to it and does the search, returning the results as JSON.

The JSON.parse() the data into objects, then use model binding to display the templated results with a JS library such as (handlebars JS).

The good thing about using WebApi to expose your search methods is that you can call the same API methods from another form on your site quite easily.

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