The {livesearch} macro appends a wildcard character (asterisk) after the search terms entered. This is a problem in a number of cases:

1. Appending an asterisk to a stemmed word (as in "management") returns far less results than expected:
   http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-5142
2. Appending an asterisk to search terms that already end in an asterisk returns zero results
3. Appending an asterisk to search terms that end in a phrase (as in "fail whale"*) returns an illegal search string error

In my testing, simply removing the asterisk from the beginning of line 182 of src/main/resources/templates/extra/livesearch/livesearch.js resolves this immediately, as in.

               livesearchList.liveSearchReq.open(
                       "GET",
                       liveSearchRoot
                               + "/plugins/livesearch/livesearch.action?decorator=none"
                               + "&queryString=" + livesearchform.s.value
                               + "&spaceKey="
                               + livesearchform.spaceKey.value);