Is there anything I can do to speed up the time it takes to get search results? Use a specific web browser...?

Not really, it's slow because the agency I get the data from has a slow API.

I have reimplemented the site in PHP (it's currently in .net) and added a caching feature (so each new query only runs once a week) which has increased it's speed a LOT for most searches, but I can't put it live yet because I need to finish porting the database over from MS-SQL to MySQL... It's a monster though because I have a lot of data to remodel :/

For now, will have to stick with it being slow, but I am working on it
Bob