The fact that he is thinking about search functions is promising. Cg appears to be more active on this site which is also nice, so I'm hoping for the best :D.

A barter like system would be nice, but that would introduce a whole new slew of issues :/.

As you said, this only works if a user adds a link on their thread, which is a rare thing (especially for those with lengthy trade threads).

Something along the lines of "Solstice" -Red (as suggested here) or something to that affect would be greatly appreciated. It is rather difficult to find games with either common names, or older version of titles that have been superseded by newer version (i.e. goty/remastered) without getting creative.

Where Solstice was one example I used, another one is trying to find The Whispered World which was bundled frequently among the large list of threads that contain The Whispered World Special Edition which also has been bundled extensively.

One is significantly more costly than the other, though it would be difficult to find the rare one among the endless threads that spawn from the current setup. This is why I'm asking for a search function that allows some sort of qualifiers instead of searching for threads with 'X'. I appreciate the work you have done, but this is something that has bugged me for a long time :/.

Also, when did searching by app become a thing? (On the trade side I mean).

edit: i'm too slow. Cj covered it. im tl;dr version of the same.

would a minus feature be easy to add to the current search though?

using above example search string:
dark souls -2 -ii -3 -iii (when trying to find the original in a series)