[alisonatwork]

It seems the sibling commenters don't know about the DisableSearchBoxSuggestions registry option, which I highly recommend keyboard users of Windows to set up on every system they work with.

When the setting is applied the start menu will go back to the old behavior where results appear instantly and always point to your local machine. I'm sure dedicated launchers can do an even better job for deep searches, but personally I've never found myself particularly slowed down by the built-in behavior after disabling that borked web search functionality.