Search and Selection suggestions

What do you think about the behavior that each time you enter a search term in the search, the term vanishes after about 0,3 second and the search is carried out. This yields to the fact, that advanced search syntax can't be used at all (at least you're are not the speedy gonzales of typing) and just refactoring a search term combination becomes cumbersome.
Is there a way to change the behaviour to search on pressing Enter only? Isn't this an expected behavior for search engines anyway?