GUEST.Ed wrote: And how many times must Joe Offer be asked
Why the Mudcat search doesn't work?

It is unfortunate. It's also worth pointing out that it isn't entirely Joe's or Max's fault. Speaking from experience... Google searches (e.g. the DT Lyrics search) are not what they're cracked up to be for aites like this. They have a strong dependence on things outside the site owner's control, like how often a particular page is linked to, and Google also wants a site map, which doesn't work as well at a site where people create new threads all the time. I can't really speak to the "under the hood" parts of Mudcat, but Google searches of the Ballad Index are not very good for that very reason. Nor is DuckDuckGo/Bing any better -- though it often finds different things than Google.

That said, the fallback -- which sometimes works even when Mudcat is down, because it might fetch a cached page -- is to use the browser search function. In your search bar, type

site:mudcat.org (whatever it is you're looking for)

And your browser will give you a list of search results from Google just from Mudcat.