diff --git a/similarity_search.c b/similarity_search.c
index 6dc750a..40b3d21 100644
--- a/similarity_search.c
+++ b/similarity_search.c
@@ -48,7 +48,9 @@ int split_into_words(const char *s,
 
 // Free memory allocated for words
 void free_words(char *storage) {              /* simplified               */
-    free(storage);                            /* single free, if any      */
+    if (storage) {                            /* check for NULL           */
+        free(storage);                        /* single free, if any      */
+    }
 }
 
 // Calculate Levenshtein distance between two strings
@@ -105,7 +107,7 @@ float word_similarity(const char *word1, const char *word2) {
 // Calculate similarity between query and target string
 float calculate_similarity(const char *query, const char *target, float cutoff) {
     // Split strings into words
-    char *query_buf, *target_buf;
+    char *query_buf = NULL, *target_buf = NULL;
     char *query_words[MAX_WORDS], *target_words[MAX_WORDS];
     
     int query_word_count = split_into_words(query,  query_words,  &query_buf);
@@ -304,6 +306,12 @@ SearchResult* search_index(SearchIndex* index, const char* query, float cutoff,
         }
     }
     
+    // If no results found, return NULL properly
+    if (*num_results == 0) {
+        free(temp_results);
+        return NULL;
+    }
+    
     // Sort results by similarity
     qsort(temp_results, *num_results, sizeof(SearchResult), compare_results);
     
diff --git a/similarity_search_addon.cc b/similarity_search_addon.cc
index 40aa2f4..8cb0787 100644
--- a/similarity_search_addon.cc
+++ b/similarity_search_addon.cc
@@ -129,9 +129,9 @@ Napi::Value SearchIndexWrapper::Search(const Napi::CallbackInfo& info) {
   int num_results = 0;
   SearchResult* results = search_index(this->index_, query.c_str(), cutoff, &num_results);
   
-  if (!results) {
-    Napi::Error::New(env, "Search failed").ThrowAsJavaScriptException();
-    return env.Null();
+  // If no results found, return empty array instead of throwing error
+  if (!results || num_results == 0) {
+    return Napi::Array::New(env, 0);
   }
   
   Napi::Array result_array = Napi::Array::New(env, num_results);