AlpinoGraph is a graph-based search engine which provides treebank search using SQL database technology coupled with the Cypher query language for graphs. In the paper, we show that AlpinoGraph is a very powerful and very flexible approach towards treebank search. At the same time, AlpinoGraph is efficient. Currently, AlpinoGraph is applicable for all standard Dutch treebanks. We compare the Cypher queries in AlpinoGraph with the XPath queries used in earlier treebank search applications for the same treebanks. We also present a pre-processing technique which speeds up query processing dramatically in some cases, and is applicable beyond AlpinoGraph.