Great idea for a bounty, I can't stand the current google search setup - more flexibility in search + having better integration into the site would be great.

I have no experience with elasticsearch though, fingers crossed we've got some guru's on the job now :)

I remember there was Hive account@kaptainkrayola with steemshovel and Hive account@jabbasteem made steemle , but I'm not sure if they're still with us ..