I keep getting errors telling me that I’ve done a recent search, and thus must wait the obligatory 120 seconds between searches.
Except that I haven’t. I swear I haven’t, yet I keep getting this error anyway. On some of these occasions, I’ve visited a Doper’s profile page, and clicked on their Statistics field, but without doing any search on their posts or threads. But only on some of these instances.
Yet I still get the timer to kick in and make me wait. 
#guestworldproblems
Clicking on New Posts counts as a search (though that doesn’t seem to be the issue here). I’m not aware of anything that you listed being counted as a search.
The search function here is admittedly a little wonky at times, more for some people than others for some reason. Occasionally it will think that you just did a search when you didn’t, as it apparently did for you. It will also sometimes tell you that you must wait 120 seconds between searches, please wait 160 seconds before searching again (or some other seemingly random number that is larger than 120). It seems to get worse under heavy server load. Other than that, I don’t have much useful information about it.
Depending on what you are searching for, a google search might be faster, easier, and more reliable. Just add “site:straightdope.com” (without the quotes) to whatever you are searching for and it will only return results for the SDMB.
Will that work within a thread (which is where I’ve often been using it)?
I get this too, as well as a message that tells me (every time) that I can’t post when I submit a reply. The thing is, on the latter, it always takes it anyway, despite what it says. On the former, I never can search the board directly. I must go through Google.
For the record, I exclusively use Tapatalk and figure it’s something to do with the app. Could that be the issue for you?
It would be nice if entering an incorrect user name didn’t count as a search.
Also, now and again my search results in a blank page. Refreshing the page generates the usual “wait another 115 seconds” message.
When I use “New Posts” in the last few weeks, I’m as likely to get the “wait” message as any search results, despite not having done a previous search or used New Posts. Yes, I’ve cleared my history and cookies.
Be careful posting “TF” or its “cousins”. I got mod noted for asking appending that (not abbreviated) to another poster in response to a completely out there comment.
OK, understood. I’m just a bit flabbergasted that I am being told that I did a search, when I most certainly did not.
The board has been a bit wonky for a while. It appears to be something on the server side, a slight nonsyncricity betwwen the server clocks or something, whereby it thinks you just did a search by double pinging the servers or hitting one the hits another or something. That’s the closest to an answer I’ve seen in the discussion thread on board problems.