• decides how far to jump ahead based on the mismatched character in the text
• works best on large alphabets and natural language texts (e.g. English)

Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm

• uses information embodied in the pattern to determine where the next match could begin
• works best on small alphabets (e.g. A,C,G,T)

For the keen: The article "Average running time of the Boyer-Moore-Horspool algorithm" shows that the time is inversely proportional to size of alphabet