Alta Vista will display more than 500 hits for this query. This does not make Alta Vista the best search engine for all your needs. It is, however, the most inclusive search engine. However, these are general suggestions that apply to most search engines. The first expression will find those web pages that contain any of the words, anywhere in the document, regardless of the number of words separating the different sides of the AND expression.
Phrase searches require the words in the phrase to be next to each other in the web document.
The reverse is not true. The web is referred to as the world wide web. It is important to realize that words and phrases that are common in North America, for example, are not necessarily common anywhere else in the world. Searching for corrugated steel in the UK is probably useless. In the UK corrugated steel is usually called Corrugated iron.