Example: Search for "pathetic" by "most recent topics first". Pathetic is the third word in the first post of the top thread in the GD at this time. It is not returned in the first page of results. The top results are from 03 and 04, even though pathetic appears repeatedly in recent threads. It is still sorting by relevance, not date.
A sort by date, or range of dates, for results would be useful. Advanced search does not seem to offer this.