No scoring was used, and the judges' votes weren't revealed, but the acts that won their semifinals would then compete in the championship show.

Despite not winning her competition (she lost to Melissa Moultrie), Tiffany, performing as 'Tiffany Renee,' was the first Star Search alumna to land a #1 hit, with her cover of the Top 5 Tommy James and the Shondells hit "I Think We're Alone Now" —actually improving on the original single's chart performance.

The first Spokesmodel winner was Tracey Ross, who later became a leading actress on the soap opera Passions.

This record is actually held by singer Durell Coleman (1985), who won the $100,000 on Season 2 with 15 wins and no defeats.

Former MTV veejay Martha Quinn joined the series as co-host for the 1994–95 season, judging the musical groups competition.

In the wake of American Idol's success, Arsenio Hall hosted a new version of Star Search, which ran from 2003 to 2004 on CBS.

In the climactic moment before the score from the home audience was revealed, Hall would often say, "Hit me with the digits!"

The only real exception to this format during the first three seasons was that three people competed in the semi-final rounds, not two.

For the fourth and final season, three contestants in Adult Singer, Junior Singer, and Dance were brought back to initially compete (Comedy was dropped, jokingly because Naomi gave many comics only one star).

The show scrapped the celebrity judge and had three house judges for the entire series: Naomi Judd, MC Lyte, and Matti Leshem (who tried to berate contestants as Simon Cowell was doing at the time on American Idol).

The winner in each category not only received a trip home, but a free pass to the final show.

At the same time, a spin-off called Star Search – Das Duell der Stars von Morgen was produced and aired in Germany, but with less success than the more popular show Deutschland sucht den Superstar, the German version of the Idol franchise.

Steve Oedekerk appeared with Ed McMahon on a 1989 episode of Full House, where character Joey Gladstone scores a perfect 4 stars, tying Oedekerk, but loses the chance to continue after an audience vote breaks the tie.