The May 2008 Neilsen/NetRatings Global Index Chart indicates that the Current Digital Media Universe is 548,528,042, a 1.62 % increase since April.  As the amount of information created, published and accessed over the Internet grows, so too must the abilities of the information consumer.

With this information explosion, the information consumer who needs to make a decision by end of business, needs to locate the information to analyze and inform the decision.  The information on the number of manufacturers in the automotive industry who have gone from concept to production for alternative fuel power is there but can the C-levels get it?

Do you have the support you need?  Is the structure of the web so transparent that you feel comfortable with a Google search and the surface results or do you think maybe, just maybe an industry think tank may have just the data you need but those think tank results aren’t in your first two pages of results.

Perhaps the data needed was presented in an internal meeting several weeks ago but damned, if you can put your hands on the file right now. Or perhaps the presentation to stockholders you are working on needs bits and pieces from various reports that have been delivered over the past year.

Intranets and company portals have their own wealth of data.  Unfortunately, enterprise search is known to underperform.  This is due in part to security constraints, content management practices and system limitations.  Having a comprehensive federated/enterprise search system is such a wonderful dream.

Taxonomies, tag clouds, indexes and categories are all ways to try to make the dream come true.  There are information professionals who work everyday to manage the wealth and organize the data.  Some work in their very own universe, those portals are leaps and bounds ahead of the hard-copy file, especially for multi-national or multi-office organizations who collaborate.  Others, like Google, work to organize and make available the “whole” web.

In my opinion, its just too big.  The information you need may live in the “deep-web” or the company portal or just might be available with a simple keyword search or …the possibilities seem endless.  Do you have an expert helping guide your content management policies/strategies?  Do you have individuals available that employ expert information retrieval skills so that you can make that decision knowing you’ve reviewed the most relevant data.  Are you, as an information retriever, employing the best strategies to find the needed content?

It seems overwhelming, but the truth of the matter is that if you have a relatively good taxonomy and use sophisticated search strategies and your results are from verifiable sources you may just be skimming the surface of available information, but you are getting the answer.  And getting the Answer is what it is all about at the end of the day.