As a rule of thumb, it's a good idea to always use lower case letters when you search. This will typically return results that contain both upper and lower case letters. If you use uppercase letters in a question in a case sensitive engine, results will only include documents that also use upper case letters.
This is usually a good thing for proper nouns like names or places, which use initial upper case letters anyway. But it might cause you to miss other documents.
If you're searching for something where your keywords must be near each other to get good results, your best bets are AltaVista, which allows you to use the NEAR operator, and Lycos Advanced Search, which offers several ways to specify proximity.
Remember that sometimes your best bet for finding information is to log off and talk to your librarian. Libraries have tons of resources that aren't available on the Web. Librarians are trained experts who are usually more than willing to help you find what you're looking for. When you're getting nowhere on the Web, take advantage of these very nice "human search engines."
For more information on Search Engines and how they work try The I-Search Discussion list from Audette Media [http://www.audettemedia.com/i-search] can deliver regular expertise about the workings of search engines. It's most useful for people who want to have their Web sites turn up in search engine results. But knowing how engines find and rank sites can help you figure out how to use those search engines to your best advantage.
Ran Hock has gone "under the hood" of the major search services, and written a guide for the serious searcher showing how to make search engines perform like Formula One race cars. Each major search service gets its own chapter, designed to show the searcher what the engine has to offer and how to take advantage of it.
Although this Dummies book is in the typical informal and irreverent beginner's style, it gives you hundreds of practical tips on useful sites, search engines, and databases, both on and off the Web. Even the most competent searcher will find it invaluable.
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This file prepared and presented as an aid to help students understand the web. Send questions or comments to Royce Shook