{ photo by Zach }

Search Engine Land reports on a study of “search engine fatigue” today.

• 72.3 percent of Americans experience “search engine fatigue” (either “always,” “usually,” or “sometimes”) when researching a topic on the Internet.
• 65.4 percent of Americans say they’ve spent two or more hours in a single sitting searching for specific information on search engines.
• More than three out of four (75.1 percent) of those who experience search engine fatigue report getting up and physically leaving their computer without the information they were seeking – either “always,” “usually” or “sometimes.”

This is EXACTLY why I was attracted to the search engine space. As great as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and ASK are, people are still suffering with finding high-quality information on the internet.

One solution isn’t going to solve all these issues, but we’ve done over 18,000 pages so far at Mahalo, each of which serves at least 20 search terms. Over time we’re going to be able to solve the fatigue problem for the first 1/4 to 1/3rd of search terms. If we can do that we will have a really big business that helps a LOT of people–a LOT!

StumbleUpon and Delicious are solving the problem with a community of millions of elite bookmarkers, and AdaptiveBlue is doing some great work with semantic work.

Really exciting to see other folks confirming what I learned when I did my research on search. In the labs I’ve watched (yes, we do labs) I’ve heard this kind of thing over and over again. People GIVE UP after a certain amount of time. Can you imagine that?!?! The problem is so FUBARed that folks are giving up.

Crazy.