Donna Maurer described her actual perceptions of “people’s mental model of search, and what they expect to happen.” at her weblog:
“It is better to put more than one word in as one word gives too much stuff.
Adding an extra word gives fewer results (although most search engines give more results with more than one word, people strongly thought it would give fewer – I even probed on this).
The first word in the search box is more important than the other words.
If the words make a sensible phrase (one that humans would recognise as a phrase), the search engine should do so too and return results for the phrase.
If the words do not make a sensible phrase, the search engine shouldn’t look for the phrase (yes, this contradicts the previous point, but no-one ever said people are logical).”
