Hi Earnest,
Thanks for you detailed reply – it is much appreciated. Whenever I copy a WP instance, I always use the Duplicator plugin which does a phenomenal job at converting every last domain reference correctly. Based on that I would guess that it may be the cache. I will experiment with disabling and clearing before exporting instances of the search.
Interestingly, I later performed an export of the same search and imported it into the live site and that worked flawlessly.
Thanks again,
Dennis