I love 2 player games and the vast majority of my plays are with 2 players. My top recommendations are:

Azul—plays 2-4 players, and I love it with 2. Tile placement in patterns. Quick to learn and plays fairly quickly as well

Beer and Bread—you are playing as 2 rival towns using the same ingredients to make a variety of beers and breads. At the end of the game, your final score is whichever of the 2 is lower between beer or bread. A slightly longer time to learn than Azul, but still plays in under an hour

Splendor Duel—a tableau builder —you’re collecting gems to buy cards that count like permanent gems in your hand. Time to learn and play falls between the other 2, in my experience

Star Trek: The Next Generation

The explanation that I saw is that your home instance doesn’t index every community. Those you see when you search have already been accessed by someone else on your instance. But when you search using the specific community link, your instance now knows someone local wants that community and adds it to the index. So when you search again a little while later, it has been indexed and is in the search results.

Same