After searching Johnston County's website for a few different search terms and coming up with zero results, I thought "well heck, I can't be wording these searches THAT badly. Will ANYTHING return search results?" If the word "Johnston" returns exactly one result, I'd wager something somewhere is badly misconfigured. Funny stuff...
I have always found the Johnston County web site http://johnstonnc.com/index.cfm very user friendly by using the top 3 search options. However I agree the bottom option is worthless.
Looks like their search tool is not configured properly. You can do the same searches on google by entering a search query like this: site:johnstonnc.com trash permit https://www.google.com/search?q=sit...j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8 Much easier. Works for almost any website if you get the jist of it.