Not So Simple Search - Metrics - CIO: "According to a survey of 300 companies by Boston-based Delphi Group, nearly 30 percent of business users spend more than eight hours per week searching for electronic information."
Where is the qualitative research (not surveys!) about search? Who is watching businesspeople closely for days, logging exactly what they do (as opposed to what they say they do in a survey) and finding out why?
For what is one of the hottest IT topics around these days, there is surprisingly little valuable research being done on search. (I don't think I consider the above valuable research. Sorry guys, a survey just doesn't cut it.)
What's worse, the typical research findings ("business users spend x hours a day searching") are almost always followed by dodgy, Jakob-ish ROI conclusions ("At x US$/hour, this costs companies worldwide y billion US$ a year!"). Useful for convincing some of the more stupid CIO's, maybe. Not for much else. I guess I'm just in a pissed off mood today.