Totally random suggestion:
When I do a search and am scanning past pages of results, I generally want to skip all the ones with no replies. It would be spiffy if the search results would make Forum Topics with multiple responses (or really, any number of responses other than 0) a little more distinct. Maybe the "3 comments" text could be uber-orange or something.
I think the relevant field in search-result.tpl.php is $info_split['comment']. (At least it is in D6... I can't find it in the API for D5 but I've used it before. It might not be called the same thing.)
