 <p><code>ActionLink</code> helper method renders an anchor tag. It is ok to pass few query string items via a link. Remember Query string <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/812925/what-is-the-maximum-possible-length-of-a-query-string">has a limit</a> about how much data you can pass and it varies from browser to browser.</p> <p>What you should be doing is a form posting. You can do a form posting on a click event on a div with the help of a little javascript.</p> <p>Let's create a new view model for our search page</p> <pre><code>public class SearchVm { public List&lt;SelectListItem&gt; Operators { set; get; } public List&lt;SearchViewModel&gt; Filters { set; get; } } public class SearchViewModel { //Property has a property called "SqlColumnName" public Property Property { get; set; } public SearchOperator Operator { get; set; } public string Value { get; set; } } </code></pre> <p>So in your GET action, You will send a list of <code>SearchViewModel</code> to the view.</p> <pre><code>public ActionResult Index() { var search = new SearchVm { Filters = new List&lt;SearchViewModel&gt; { new SearchViewModel {Property = new Property {SqlColumn = "Name"}}, new SearchViewModel {Property = new Property {SqlColumn = "Age"}}, new SearchViewModel {Property = new Property {SqlColumn = "Location"}} } }; //Convert the Enums to a List of SelectListItem search.Operators= Enum.GetValues(typeof(SearchOperator)).Cast&lt;SearchOperator&gt;() .Select(v =&gt; new SelectListItem { Text = v.ToString(), Value = ((int)v).ToString() }).ToList(); return View(search); } </code></pre> <p>And in your view, which is strongly typed to your <code>SearchVm</code> view model, We will manipulate the form field names so that the model binding will work when the form is submitted.</p> <pre><code>@model SearchVm @using (Html.BeginForm()) { var i = 0; foreach (var criteria in Model.Filters) { &lt;label&gt;@criteria.Property.SqlColumn&lt;/label&gt; @Html.HiddenFor(f =&gt; f.Filters[i].Property.SqlColumn) @Html.DropDownList("Filters[" + i+ "].Operator",Model.Operators) @Html.TextBoxFor(f=&gt;f.Filters[i].Value) i++; } &lt;div id="someDiv"&gt;Search button using Div&lt;/div&gt; &lt;input type="submit" value="Search" /&gt; } </code></pre> <p>And your HttpPost action method to handle the form submit.</p> <pre><code>[HttpPost] public ActionResult Index(SearchVm model) { foreach(var f in model.Filters) { //check f.Property.SqlColumn, f.Value &amp; f.Operator } // to do :Return something useful } </code></pre> <p>If you want the form to be submitted on the click event on the div, Listen to the click event on the specific div and call the submit method on the form the div resides in.</p> <pre><code>&lt;script&gt; $(function () { $("#someDiv").click(function(e) { $(this).closest("form").submit(); }); }); &lt;/script&gt; </code></pre>