An interesting read yesterday in the Seattle Times on the evolution of search engines and how they are “redefining” our lives. It got me thinking about the horribly pathetic state of enterprise information retrieval at most companies.
First, some of the Internet stats quoted in the Times:
· Google remains the top banana representing 47% of all searches; Yahoo! is runner-up with 23% of Internet’s search engine queries (Nielsen/NetRatings)
· 76% of users who have used a search engine; 56% use a search engine on any given day; 32% of users say they “can’t live without” search engines (comScore, Pew Internet & American Life Project)
· 3.9 billion queries on Google in August 2004 (comScore, Pew Internet & American Life Project)
Unfortunately, I was not able to find comparable data on enterprise intranet searches (I doubt it exists but I’d be grateful to any reader who posts a reply with any related data or study).
However, here’s what I did find on enterprise intranet search:
· According to IDC and Delphi Group, the average knowledge worker spends about a quarter of his or her day looking for information (Google)
· “An enterprise with 1,000 knowledge workers wastes $48,000 per week – $2.5 million per year – due to an inability to locate and retrieve information.” (IDC)
· A Roper Starch Worldwide study (2000) found that on average, “Web-rage is uncaged after twelve minutes of fruitless searching, although about seven percent of the 566 people surveyed by say ire starts rising within three minutes” (ZDNet)
It’s worth noting that the number one complaint I hear about the corporate intranet at nearly every single client I’ve worked with (dozens) is “I can’t find anything.” Though I haven’t myself witnessed intranet ‘web-rage’ first hand....
Unfortunately it’s usually not the search engine’s fault; it’s the lack of system and/or execution of how web publishers categorize or save information (e.g. keywords, page titles, meta tags, etc.).
This may sound familiar if you read my article “The search isn't broken, we're broken.”