Search seems weak/broken

Question

The search function doesn't seem to work very well. I can
search for words that I *KNOW* exist, and it will tell me no
results found, or give fewer results than it should. For example,
today I searched for "pastels" and it tells me "No Results Found
For: pastels". I've also noticed that it seems to be overly picky,
for example not finding words just because the case is different,
or because the search term is part of a larger word (for example,
"pastel" should also find "pastels" but in my tests it doesn't, or
at least not consistently). Actually, at the moment none of my
searches are working at all. Earlier I had some success, but still
it was acting overly fussy.

Answer 1

Hi Sami,
Yes, I had already tried the asterisk method, and it worked
... at least when the search was working (it stopped working
completely for me after that ... haven't tried again yet).
However, these days requiring an asterisk is a bit outdated.
Google and Spotlight automatically search for keywords within
larger words. I don't think most users expect to need to use it
except for complicated matches, like an asterisk in the middle of a
word, etc.
--Michael