Frustration Overwhelms Internet Searchers

Research from WebTop shows search frustration in Great Britain

Research released today by Net information retrieval specialist, WebTop reveals that 72% of adult British Internet users find it frustrating when their Internet searches result in irrelevant information. The survey, conducted by independent research company MORI, on behalf of WebTop, investigates British use of the Internet for information retrieval and searching.

The great value of the Internet lies in the information it provides, yet the vast majority (72%) of Internet users are frustrated by the quality of the information they receive. Women are more likely to find irrelevant results frustrating than men, with 37% of women stating that they find this very frustrating compared to just 29% of men.

Over one-third of the 14.7 million British adult Internet users spend more than an hour per week looking for relevant information for their work and personal lives on the Web. Sourcing accurate information is key, with 70% of work Internet users stating that accurate information is very important to their business life.

Almost half (48%) of British Internet users also believe that accurate information is very important to their personal life, while a further 37% believe it is fairly important. However, the Web is failing to deliver that accuracy with 31% of UK Internet users stating that they often don't find what they need on the net.

John Snyder, CEO of WebTop said: "The Internet is all about information, but it's no good to anyone if you can't find what you need. Search engines haven't really moved on since the Internet was created, so what WebTop is doing is developing the next generation search engine for the next generation Internet user."

WebTop optimises and maximises users' Web experiences through context-sensitive news and information searches, changing the way people search the Internet. WebTop's Personal Desktop Assistant (PDA), searches in context across its index of over 500 million Web documents, and in specific Zones to deliver relevant information.

Unlike other search engines that restrict you to one or two word searches, the PDA allows users to drag and drop or highlight and click sentences, phrases or paragraphs of text from any application into the PDA in order to get context-rich results. Like WAP, WebTop's PDA represents a new generation for the Internet.

Technical details

MORI interviewed a nationally representative quota sample of 600 Internet users in their homes between June 8 and June 13, 2000. All those interviewed were aged 15 or over, with 379 (63%) of the respondents working full or part time.