For the last several days, an unknown number of Android users have been getting inconsistent results when using the built-in Google Search app on their phones and tablets. And by "inconsistent," I mean that they aren't getting any at all, instead being greeted by the enigmatic message "can't load search results" whenever they try to use it. While none of the Android Police staff have experienced this, threads on Google Code, Google Groups, and Reddit continue to receive replies.

Left screenshot from commented "abqnm."

At present there doesn't seem to be any reliable way to fix the issue on the user's end, though some are seeing limited success from wiping the app data. For some a voice-activated search will work while text search won't. The issue is affecting users on a variety of devices and Android versions. Responses from Google have been short and inconclusive: representative "DeLayne T" seems to be giving the only direct replies in this thread.

Hi everyone, Thank you everyone for letting us know about this issue. We are currently working on it and I will post an update on this thread once we know more. Thank you for your patience! Best, DeLayne

Tempers are beginning to run hot on the support pages, with many Android phone owners wondering why a company with Google's resources hasn't been able to fix such a glaring issue in a more timely manner. Considering the amount of responses proportionate to the Android userbase as a whole, we're still looking at a tiny minority of affected users.

The search errors seem to be limited to the primary Google Search app at the moment. If you're experiencing difficulties, try searching from the address bar in Chrome for Android or the AOSP browser. Or you could always try Bing.

Source: Google Groups, Google Code (2), Reddit - thanks to everyone who sent this in.