I understand that when the SDMB was created, it might have made sense to have a 2 minute waiting period between searches and that even today, you might want to have a few seconds to prevent automated software from flooding the board. But in 2010, is bandthwidth so dear that a search should only be done after 2 minutes? I often get a search wrong or want to do two searches at once and I can’t. Am I alone?
If so, never mind.
Search times were shorter when the SDMB was created.
It wasn’t until usage got greater and the Chicago Reader insisted on recycling early UNIVACs to host the archives that the search times were increased. They went up to five minutes. Two minutes is an improvement over what it was shortly before you joined.
Use Google. Here’s the sticky post with all the tricks.
Until recently it was a five-minute wait between searches.
A few years ago we had some serious database problems and the board frequently halted or went off the air. Although I don’t believe the True Cause was ever tracked down, it was thought that searches were a contributing factor, and they were limited. We’re still living under some of those restrictions.
I liked the idea someone had of a four minute wait every two searches. That allows you continue after you get one botched search (like searching for too short terms or something).
What bugs me is when I try to do a search and get a database error response and then have to wait two minutes because of a problem I didn’t cause. :mad:
This happens to me at least once a day. I hates it.
That’s a fine idea but I am pretty sure that standard vB doesn’t allow it.
I do either zero or two searches altogether in a typical week, but when two, they’re usually back-to-back, with the first failing due to my typo (or thinko 
) or, often, as you suggest, an SDMB internal error.
Since I’ll be doing something where I want the search results now and end up almost twiddling my thumbs for the 120 seconds, it would almost be preferable to impose an hour delay! 
It might be nice to see the relevant software details. I’d not be surprised if there’s a straightforward fix allowing, for example, 2 searches every 4 minutes.
There is not a way to do this with vB without a hack. The Admin Panel only allows you to set the minimum time allowed between searches. This can be set to 0 if you don’t want to impose a limit.
Then how about setting it to 1 (or the minimum fractional value, if that’s allowed). Still imposes a delay, but it reduces “thumb-twiddling time” (to paraphrase [and +1] what an earlier poster said).
ETA: Thanks to the poster who gave the Google search instructions, I will keep them in mind. But sometimes using the board’s internal search is better/gives better results. It has it’s good points over Google, and so is sometimes used, despite the 2 minute limit.