Illegal mix of collations (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) and (cp1251_general_ci,COERCIBLE) for operation 'like' SQL query : SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT p.productID) FROM SS_products p where categoryID>1 and enabled=1 and ( LOWER(name) LIKE '%%' OR LOWER(product_code ) LIKE '%%' OR LOWER(brief_description) LIKE '%%' )