Those squares appear when you log in to Google, reader, Gmail or anything like that an simply give additional function. I took the screen shot when I was logged into google reader so the squares would show I have never used the function. So to produce the squares you must have been logged into Google something.....

On the search results page, there's a box in the upper right that defaults to "Relevance". You can touch the down arrow in the box and change it to "Latest activity".

That is funny! This is one of my favourite news bloopers: Chris P. Bacon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMA3x-bc8iM&feature=youtu.be

Agree, the search feature is ineffective. I think that is contributing to why the posts /threads seem so haphazard and random and redundant. In the old days, you could really put in a term in the search feature which would work to return threads from even years ago (and certainly weeks or months ago) and you could bring them back to life. Now not at all so the value of the forums has really declined. I too wish the search feature could work. It's not you.