Yesterday, when we are searching on web ( for a different functionality ), we found one interesting article. Here is the requirement, in the home page, user have to search for a item(probably list of items) in a list on meta data selected by the user. We thought of doing it in out-of-box functionality. Here is how we have implemented ( with some drawbacks 
),
1) Create a Content Editor Web Part, make free text, drop down list with all meta data names and a button. On Click of the button, through javascript build a URL like this,
http://yoursite/yourwebpartpage.aspx?FilterField1=<Value from the Drop Down>&FilterValue1=<Value from the text>
use the javascript, for redirecting the page to the URL that we built
window.location.href = "URL like one above"
2) Create a List View Part in the same web part page, from which the items needs to be filtered. You can limit the no of items displayed per page through the view, if you have more items to be displayed.
That's it. Your simple search ready in minutes.
One drawback is that we can't use wild card search (or atleast i haven't found how do that).
Hope this helps.
Satheesh Palaniswamy
satheesh