Now, the trick is to work backwards to get all the conditions back in there as needed.
When I tried a data source url like this:
/repositories/compasscare/optimizecore/issues{{#search}}?q=(content.raw~“{{search}}”+OR+title~“{{search}}”){{/search}}
I got the 0 again for {{search}}.
So, the issue clearly has something to do with the interaction between the conditional merge syntax and the regular merge syntax.
I dropped the conditional merge syntax, and went with this
/repositories/compasscare/optimizecore/issues?q=(content.raw~“{{search}}”+OR+title~“{{search}}”)
And it worked again!