You might be searching the same database under different names. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since the results will come back in a different order. But you ought to be careful not to waste your time with unnecessary duplication. Search Engine Watch lists all the major search sites and the engines they use. Boolean Searching Boolean syntax is a kind of search engine logic.
Most search engines support at least some Boolean logic.
You can also use quotation marks to search for phrases. Boolean searching is a powerful technique of narrowing a search. For more on this technique, look at Search Engine Watch's Search Engine Math . Relevance Ranking Most search engines will try to sort your results by relevance. For example, if all your search words appear frequently on a page, then that web page might get a high ranking.