Clare Leibfarth directed me to this article in searchenginewatch.com.
If Search Engines Could Read Your Mind
By Chris Sherman, Associate Editor
May 11, 2005

Brief excerpt:
"When people complain about "poor quality" or "irrelevant" search results, they almost never blame their own poorly formed request—yet bad queries are a huge part of the problem. It's actually quite remarkable that search engines can take a sparse two or three word query and make sense of it. Lacking context, search engines are forced to virtually guess at your true intent."

Interesting article about the use of artificial intelligence in search engine programming. Of course we as librarians always point out that we are better than a search engine because while we may not read your mind, we have the ability to make the search process a two sided conversation.