This idea has been merged into another idea. To comment or vote on this idea, please visit PL-I-271 PIM: navigation, search, filter and lists.
When searching in the PIM you are always taken to Variants as standard. Some customers who uses BaseProduct more frequently would like to have BaseProduct as standard option.
Testing this in version 8.31 works as described in the idea. There is now a setting whether to show base products or variants and this setting is persisted on user.