Its not only Pew Internet & American Life that understands searchers are getting smarter. Google obviously must think so as well, by raising their 10 word limit to 32 words. The blogs are buzzing about this, here is a listing of some blogs:
And forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Comments:
-lc-
01/24/2005 01:29 pm
Are searchers getting smarter or are people just copying and pasting more without knowing the word limit? ;) In any case it just got easier to search for content theft - thank you Google!