Custom Search Result Page

Ok I am trying to modify my search.php page to include more results per page than what it currently shows. Right now it uses the Loop to return only 3 results (which is what I have my site do by default) but I don’t wnat to change the rest of the site to display more posts per page without using the search.

So really what I am looking to do is either a) tell the loop on search.php to display more results than the default setting or b) figure out how the searchform.php submits it’s data so I can create a custom wp_query to display the amount of items I want but still pagenate properly.

Right now I show only 3 results per search, I would like to increase that to either 5-10 without changing the rest of the site.

Would I need to look at something like this? http://rephrase.net/miscellany/05/perpage.phps