The truth of the matter is vBulletin's search feature is an absolute pig.

It is next to useless as a search tool and it uses an incredible amount of server resources. It is, without a doubt, the most bloated function in the entire vB package.

There have been repeated requests for a re-write of the search function, but the requests seem to fall on deaf ears. Those of you familiar with the latest release candidate version of the vB software will understand when I say foo-foo user profiles are apparently more important than an efficient search function.