diff --git a/Koha/SearchEngine/Elasticsearch/QueryBuilder.pm b/Koha/SearchEngine/Elasticsearch/QueryBuilder.pm
index a7cb7346d5..01b62be4e8 100644
--- a/Koha/SearchEngine/Elasticsearch/QueryBuilder.pm
+++ b/Koha/SearchEngine/Elasticsearch/QueryBuilder.pm
@@ -986,7 +986,7 @@ sub clean_search_term {
     $term =~ s/((?<!\\)(?:[\\]{2})*:[^:\s]+(?<!\\)(?:[\\]{2})*)(?=:)/$1\\/g;
 
     # screen all exclamation signs that either are the last symbol or have white space after them
-    $term =~ s/(?:[\s\\]*!\s*)+(\s|$)/$1/g;
+    $term =~ s/(?:[\s\\]*!\s*)+(\s|$|\))/$1/g;
 
     # screen all brackets with backslash
     $term =~ s/(?<!\\)(?:[\\]{2})*([\{\}\[\]])$lookahead/\\$1/g;