Quotes provide you with exact match results. Putting quotes around an entire phrase isn't what I intend sometimes, and quoting each term in the query is just excessive. In that case, I'll just click the extra link...
A timesaver that might be useful on the edge cases is to prefix terms with a plus sign. +the +quick +brown +dog is easier to type than "the" "quick" "brown" "dog", and should have the same results.
