The new Spotlight feature in Tiger does a great job at searching the contents of PDF files. Clicking on the result will open the file in Preview, starting at the first reference. However, the default zoom is so large that the context containing the reference is lost without manually zooming out.
It is possible to change the default zoom when opening PDFs from Spotlight using a plist editor, such as the Property List Editor (part of Xcode) or a third party tool like Plist Edit Pro.
Open the file ~/Library -> Preferences -> com.apple.Preview.plist and look for this key:
Root -> Preview -> PVPDFSpotlightSelectionSize
Change the value to 1, then save the file and quit the editor. Next time a result is opened from Spotlight, the entire page will be displayed.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20051114175158162