Search runs from two characters onward. Type a single letter and nothing is sent, no results load, and the page keeps showing the line it shows when the box is empty: "Find projects, journals, competitions, publications, and more". One character looks exactly like a search that has not been started, which is why it reads as broken rather than refused.
The box in the navigation bar does not stop you
Press Enter in the search box at the top of the site with one character in it and you are taken to the search page anyway. The search page then ignores the query for being too short, so you land on what looks like an empty page. The letter is still sitting in the box. Add one more character and results appear without you doing anything else.
The address bar does not keep a one-character query
A query below two characters is not written into the page address. So a one-letter search does not survive a reload, cannot be bookmarked, and produces nothing for anyone you send the link to. From two characters onward the query is in the address and behaves normally.
Spaces do not count towards the two
The query is trimmed before it is measured, so a letter followed by a space is still one character.
The same minimum applies elsewhere
Switching to the Projects, People or any other result tab uses the same rule, so a short query leaves every tab empty rather than only the first one. The Search people to message box in the messages panel also needs two characters before it offers anybody.
What to do
- Type at least two characters. A single initial cannot be searched for at all.
- Give it a moment. The search waits about four tenths of a second after you stop typing before it runs, so results arrive just after you finish rather than on each keystroke.
- Use a longer fragment when two characters return noise. Two characters is the minimum the page accepts, not the length that finds things well.