People searching the Internet for information are more likely to find the correct
answer than a wrong one. The catch is that you’re most likely not to find an answer
at all. Researchers at Ohio State University in Columbus (Reference and user
Services Quarterly, vol 38, p 360) used search engines to carry out keyword
searches on 60 simple questions, such as “What is the population of Cloumbus,
Ohio?”, and found that 64 per cent of Web pages either didn’t contain the answer
or no longer existed. Of the remainder, 27 per cent had the correct information. The
others were wrong.
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