The Wordpress search engine is primitive, clunky and largely unusable. Instead of providing paragraphed links with neat summaries of each result (like your normal Google.com results page), the Wordpress engine finds every post with your queried word and then slaps them on all on the page, one after the other, without any attempt at summarizing. If ten results are found in a search, it might take six or seven screens worth of scrolling down the page to see what each one is. To illustrate, compare the search for “productivity” in my original Wordpress powered search with the Google powered search:
Wordpress search for "productivity"
Google search results for "productivity"
The Google powered search (which can be downloaded here)summarizes each result into a short paragraph – a link at the top alongside the title of the article, two lines of relevant summary, and the URL (http bit). With the Google engine, one screen worth of space fits ten results, rather than the two or three you’d end up with using the Wordpress engine.
Besides better summarizing and results display, the Google engine also finds more relevant results and the net result of these improvements is that readers will spend more time on your site, since they can finally find what they want.
UPDATE: I got the Google powered search working by signing up for Google Custom Search, then inserting the code given into a widget. I also referred to a good explanatory article about integrating Google Custom Search with your blog. There is alternatively a plugin available, however this did not work on my theme.
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