Search Function

Any fellow bloggers out there know how on earth you make your search function USEFUL? When I do a search for something I know is there, it finds nothing. Took forever to find the oatmeal bread recipe after losing the paper I had on the refrigerator. JY - I searched yours for Wordless postings and found LOTS. :) My privacy settings are set so that the blog can not be indexed by search engines. Does that make a difference? One search widget I tried adding said I should make it public (yeah, right) for better results. Just hoping someone out there can help me! :)