The tricks I use are the following:

1. Setting my speed to T3 and maxing the number of connections in the connections window (only 12 in latest versions). This can give considerably more search results, although once your download is off and running, you should lower the number of connections again to reduce the use of bandwidth.

2. Repeating a search several times as hits vary continuously.

3. Killing and restarting a download will sometimes do the trick.

4. Using the reinstated Browse Host facility intelligently.
e.g. if you see a host with a file similar to what you want (same genre of music/same computer platform etc.) browse it and see if you get lucky.

If all of that fails, you can go back to one of the old versions, although P2P boffins say they're less Gnutella-friendly.