50% of all searches fail in a manner that the person doing the search recognizes as a failure.  A far more significant problem is that 50% of the searches believed to have succeeded failed, but the person doing the search simply doesn’t realize it.  As a result, that person uses information that is at best out of date but more often incorrect or just not the right data.  When the “bad” information is then used in a document or communication, there is a cascading effect that further propagates the incorrect information.

It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million people and television only 13 years.

It took the Internet a mere four years to reach that number. Just last month there were 10 billion Web searches performed and most people didn’t find what they were looking for. Here’s to less information!