ParCark, I think you mistook the site search for the talk search. The talk search hasn't changed in months. It's the search you get to by clicking "Search for messages".
Site search was improved a month or so ago, whereby we added some useful links underneath the search box, which itself was switched from Google to Yahoo. This is because Yahoo currently to do a better job of indexing the site.
The only recent change, about a week ago, was that if you type in a bad URL (the bit at the top of your browser which says which page you want) instead of just getting an ugly message saying "404 Page Not Found" you get a nice error message and a search box to help you find what you were looking for.