diff --git a/src/common/kiwix/searcher.cpp b/src/common/kiwix/searcher.cpp
index 8bc300fc3..624101fb2 100644
--- a/src/common/kiwix/searcher.cpp
+++ b/src/common/kiwix/searcher.cpp
@@ -47,7 +47,8 @@ namespace kiwix {
     this->resultCountPerPage = resultEnd - resultStart;
     this->resultStart = resultStart;
     this->resultEnd = resultEnd;
-    searchInIndex(removeAccents(search), resultStart, resultEnd, verbose);
+    string unaccentedSearch = removeAccents(search);
+    searchInIndex(unaccentedSearch, resultStart, resultEnd, verbose);
     this->resultOffset = this->results.begin();
 
     return;
diff --git a/src/common/unaccent.cpp b/src/common/unaccent.cpp
index aca183a70..0e7f865d7 100644
--- a/src/common/unaccent.cpp
+++ b/src/common/unaccent.cpp
@@ -22,13 +22,13 @@
 UErrorCode status = U_ZERO_ERROR;
 Transliterator *trans = Transliterator::createInstance("Lower; NFD; [:M:] remove; NFC", UTRANS_FORWARD, status);
 
-std::string &removeAccents(std::string &text) {
+std::string removeAccents(const std::string &text) {
   ucnv_setDefaultName("UTF-8");
   UnicodeString ustring = UnicodeString(text.c_str());
   trans->transliterate(ustring);
-  text.clear();
-  ustring.toUTF8String(text);
-  return text;
+  std::string unaccentedText;
+  ustring.toUTF8String(unaccentedText);
+  return unaccentedText;
 }
 
 void printStringInHexadecimal(UnicodeString s) {
diff --git a/src/common/unaccent.h b/src/common/unaccent.h
index 85e63d374..ae07b44ba 100644
--- a/src/common/unaccent.h
+++ b/src/common/unaccent.h
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@
 #include <iostream>
 #include <string>
 
-std::string &removeAccents(std::string &text);
+std::string removeAccents(const std::string &text);
 void printStringInHexadecimal(const char *s);
 void printStringInHexadecimal(UnicodeString s);