How do I use jQuery's form.serialize but exclude empty fields

I have a search form with a number of text inputs & drop downs that submits via a GET. I'd like to have a cleaner search url by removing the empty fields from the querystring when a search is performed.

var form = $("form");  
var serializedFormStr = form.serialize();  
// I'd like to remove inputs where value is '' or '.' here
window.location.href = '/search?' + serializedFormStr

Any idea how I can do this using jQuery?