thanks for replying. unfortunately i have done this and the Indexing status on admin/settings/search says 100% and still it doesn't turn up a ton of more recent nodes.
Have a look in your database and see if you have any nodes with a create date in the future. It's an odd one that sometimes crops up that's got me twice in the past:
mysql: SELECT nid FROM node WHERE created > UNIX_TIMESTAMP(NOW());
Then check to see if one of these nodes as hit "node_cron_last_nid" variable.
SELECT value FROM variable WHERE name="node_cron_last_nid";
If you get a matching nid then that's your problem. I fixed it by making future nodes past nodes, removing the variable "node_cron_last_nid" and completely re-indexing. I then told our inputers don't put future dates into nodes!
Worth a try. Let us know if that's successful or not.
--Andy (AjK)