Internet Search Challenge: More information, a smaller fraction - 0 views
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The paradoxical thing about information and searching is that the more of it there is, the less of it we will see. The results we retrieve will be a smaller and smaller sample of what's actually available. And I don't see how this trend can be reversed.
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When I ask workshop participants if they've ever gone to the end of the list retrieved, I've never encountered anyone who has. Most searchers stop after the first page; the number who look at two pages is much smaller. For the 8 people in 100 who go beyond the third page, they have access to 0.1% of the information theoretically available. For the majority who never look beyond page one, that number falls to 0.025%.
