Thanks to Brandon on the Windows Search team, for the excellent Start++ configuration utility! One of my biggest problems with running programs from the search bar was starting them with elevated privileges. At the time I was not aware of the ctrl+shift+enter key combo to prompt for UAC, so I created a command called 'sudo'* in Start++ that runs commands with Administrative access.
Click the "New..." row, for shortcut name it sudo (or whatever you want to name it), command is %1 (this will use anything you type after "sudo" in the search bar as the parameter and in the arguments section you will put %>1 to use all parameters after the first, this way you can include any arguments to your command. It should resemble the following screenshot:
*Newer versions of Start++ may come with this command built-in, I was using an older version at the time of writing.