Cercando come avremmo fatto, non siamo riusciti a trovarlo.

[system]

English Original Sentence

Search as we would, we could not find it.

Is this an idiomatic translation of the idiom “as we would”?

[mike-lima]

Uhm. this is not a good translation of the English sentence, and not very natural.

I would say something like:
“Per quanto abbiamo cercato, non siamo riusciti a trovarlo”.

[morbrorper]

Thanks for confirming my suspicion!