Phrase Searching helps to reduce irrelevant and unwanted results. Let's see what happens with an EBSCOhost search for a simple summer cookout favorite the hot dog.
Without Phrase Search
Search: hot dog (no quotes)
Notice on the left hand side we have returned over 38,800 results in this database.
There are several results, many of which return articles on hot dog as a food, but we also return articles about dogs that are hot. This occurs due to the keywords appearing anywhere in the article, and in any order.
Now for an example with Phrase Search
Search: "hot dog"
Using Phrase Search reduced the number of results down to less than 13,000. These are far more likely to be on the food and not on a dog that is hot.
