Stopping stupid searches crashing the site

[Chatgroup]

Hi guys,
Our site is relatively stable most of the time now however on occassion we have someone using our search to try and trawl the site for a single word.  Considering the size and type of the forum it's pretty obvious it's going to come back with literally MILLIONS of hits.  It causes a lockup on our database, it's basically the equivalent of searching "fish" on a fishing forum

Anyone got any way around this other than shortening the search index range?

 

[Joel R]

You should submit a ticket as IPS is currently fine-tuning the search function and might welcome this timely example.  

[Chatgroup]

I've mentioned it too them in a ticket too

Are there any tips for optimising the database for searching without crashing the site?

3.x we used sphinx and although it had a lot of issues it never affected site performance in any way.