I think I found part of a solution to the "search term being too short" problem at VEF--but I can't seem to recreate the problem today.
I will tell everyone anyway in case it helps someone in the future or is a work-around that someone might wish to program into a search engine.
When I need to seach for a person or title that has a short name, it seems that if I 'add' something (with a "+" sign) to the search term then the search engine does not reject the term even if it still remains too short.
Examples: Pretend I need to find a model named "Iam Pi" or a movie named "Bob" which are too short for the search engine.
(Up until a short time ago) "Iam", "Pi", "Iam Pi", and "Bob" would normally be rejected by the search engine, however if I used a '+' phrase like "Iam+Pi" or "Bob+clip"--without the quotes--then the search engine would return correct results.
I hope that helps people in some way,
e.d.