The Advanced Search page is reachable in one click from any eBay page, and once you are there you can do anything you could have done previously from the standard search page, so at most it is one extra click per search.
I find bookmarking to be useful for searches that I intend to do over an over again. Some folks like to use the Saved Search feature, but that is limited to one hundred searches. Bookmarking provides more direct control over the search, and the bookmarks can be organized in many different ways. I like to put twenty or thirty related bookmarks in a folder on a browser toolbar, so I can open all the searches at once in different tabs with a couple of clicks (right-click on the folder, select "Open All in Tabs).
The "hide eBay suggestions" link has disappeared and reappeared before -- perhaps its current disappearance is temporary as well.
