How does Google's boolean searching work with its phrasing?

I've never seen a power users guide to searching on Google

[prowsej]

Some questions from the perspective of a Google user:
Will this do an OR search for either "phrase one" or "phrase two" or will the OR search only work on the words "one" and "phrase"?
"phrase one" ¦ "phrase two"

[RBuzz]

prowsej,

The example you cited will search for each phrase. For an example proof do the following three searches, noting the search result count for each one:

"catbird seat" ¦ "catbird seats"
"catbird seat"
"catbird seats"