The ereg_replace method above doesn't work for me, and if it did I'd be kind of leary of it since it's basically taking a step backward and really not solving the problem. (no offense to Papoo)
I've been comparing the original vBulletin search.php and the changes Traekwon made, seeing if I can figure out what the problem is for some of us. From what I can see it involves problems with quotes (") and extra plus signs (+) being inserted in queries, even single word queries... it's like the search thinks there is more than one word no matter what.
Of particular interest is the urldecode() lines that Traekwon seems to have removed... if I add it back for the masterquery (ie $masterquery = urldecode($masterquery); I can sort of get it working better, but not perfect.
Where did Traekwon drop off the face of the planet to, anyway.