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Brett Tabke posted a WebmasterWorld thread linking to a new survey by Convera that polled 1,112 professionals in various industries in November. The article is at The Enquirer by the AP and it reveals the following:
- Only 21 percent of professionals feel that their search query is always understood.
- Just one in 10 professionals always finds exactly what he or she is looking for on the first attempt.
- About 70 percent admit getting sidetracked during the search process and end up on sites they didn’t expect to visit and are not relevant to their work.
- When searches do not return precise information, more than half of professionals believe the information they’re seeking exists, but they do not have the skills to find it.
- One third of professionals will make decisions without all the facts they need after a series of search attempts fails to help them.
If they can't find the results, what do they do?
- 90 percent will try the same search engine using a slightly different term
- 60 percent will try another popular search engine
- More than half will turn to a topic-specific search engine
I was a bit surprised by this finding;
Nearly 90 percent of professionals think that search engines developed by trade publications or professional organizations would yield more relevant content than popular consumer engines.
Just realized that this was also posted at Search Engine Land a couple weeks ago.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
