Always use more than one word in a search. Use descriptive, specific words as opposed to general ones. Use the filtering features provided at the search engine being used. Most search engines provide some form of filtering pages returned from a search. For example, Excite provides the option to power search, which guides users through restricting a search using several methods.
Some engines sort the search results by site.
This presents several pages from the same site thus minimizing search time when one site has multiple documents relevant to the search. In addition to the relevance ordering many search engines provide additional means for narrowing a search. These take the form of additional links related to the search terms. These general search hints should reduce the number of pages returned when searching for information. However, the general search routines described above are likely to produce more pages than users might be willing or have time to deal with.