That seems to be “normal” behavior for both Lemmy and Kbin currently. When an instance that isn’t already federated to the server is queried, it starts the federation process which can take awhile. Unfortunately no indication in the GUI seems to happen when it does this versus simply being unable to find it.
Search is basically limited to what’s already federated to or hosted on this server. However if you go find the community you’re interested on another server you can look for it from here with a full “path” and it will start federation to this server.
When you get the name on another server, it might look like one of the following (could be Kbin or Lemmy. I don’t know if this Lemmy group even exists):
https://kbin.social/m/dwarffortress
/m/dwarffortress@kbin.social
https://lemmy.world/c/dwarffortress
/c/dwarffortress@lemmy.world
@dwarffortress@kbin.social
!dwarffortress@lemmy.world
dwarffortress@kbin.social
(not common)dwarffortress@lemmy.world
(not common)In Kbin you would search for these as:
@dwarffortress@kbin.social
@dwarffortress@lemmy.world
In Lemmy they would be searched for as:
!dwarffortress@kbin.social
!dwarffortress@lemmy.world
Keep in mind that the following apply:
EDIT: add quoting to block autolinking full text
EDIT2: Clarify federation is opt-out