One of the problems is that most of the people who connect to Gnutella are "leeches" i.e. they don't share any files themselves, you can check that for your self, by looking at your host cache and noting how many people have 0 files shared.

It comes down to "give a little, get a little", I wish people would realize this,
whats the point in touting about a point to point sharing protocol if no one is "sharing" anything.

Another problem that's more technical, is that your searches are very sensitive to your "My TTL" setting, try setting it at 1 and repeat your searches, and then 2,3 etc. and see the difference, both in the number of returns you'll get, and in the time it takes to show your searches. the original Gnutella was better at this, because it displayed results as soon as it got a reply. Gnotella appears to wait for all returns before displaying the results