IME, searching by collections of keywords has become a good strategy. Avoiding using vague/topical keywords ('music', 'chemical'), instead asking for specific w

IME, searching by collections of keywords has become a good strategy. Avoiding using vague/topical keywords ('music', 'chemical'), instead asking for specific words that should/must be found in the search results. If the results start to exclude an important keyword (e.g. '1872' or 'giant' or 'legend'), put a plus sign in front of it and resubmit. I regularly use DDG (which claims privacy) for this, and requests can be quite specific. E.g. a quotation "these words in this order" may result in -no result at all-, which is preferable to being second-guessed by the engine. I wonder how 'search engines are not required' would work without expecting the searcher to acquire expertise in drilling down through topical categories, as attempts like 'http://www.odp.org/' http://www.odp.org/' did.