Why some searches don't go through

I have tried to search for posts on the SDMB with keywords such as “water” and “time.” Every time I try these searches, which include my Username, the screen shows a message that the search has failed. This happens only with certain specific keywords. Why?

I don’t know specifically why it fails on particular words, but it is pretty well known that our buggy little search engine has this “feature”. If you are searching for multiple terms, sometimes just rearranging the terms will get it to stop failing. Then again, sometimes not.

If you just can’t get it to work with certain terms, you can use google to search for those terms instead.

Details here: HOWTO: Search the SDMB using Google
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=638051

Since the search engine is built into the version of vBulletin that we are using, it’s not going to get fixed, at least not for as long as we continue to use this version of the software.