Interesting survey on the current state of search, from a user experience standpoint -- apparently from a poll of 1001 US adults conducted by Kelton Research. Key takeaways:
- 65.4% of Americans say they've spent two or more hours in a single sitting searching for specific information on search engines.
- 72.3% experience "search engine fatique" when researching a topic on the Internet.
- 75.1% of those who experience search engine fatique report getting up and physically leaving their computer without the information they were seeking.
- 78% "wished" that search engines could (in effect) read their minds to deliver the results they were looking for.
Also some info on why these people were so frustrated -- the issues look to be somewhat evenly distributed, instead of just one problem:
When asked to name their #1 complaint about the process, 25 percent cited a deluge of results, 24 percent cited a predominance of commercial (paid) listings, 18.8 percent blamed the search engine’s inability to understand their keywords (forcing them to try again), and 18.6 percent were most frustrated by disorganized/random results.
Comments