[January 14, 2009]

Boost eLearning Survey Reports Most Employees Lack Basic Google Search Skills for Business Research

SEATTLE --(Business Wire)--

Boost eLearning, the pioneer in Google search training for organizations, today announced results of a new survey that indicate employees are not leveraging Google's basic search functionality for business research. The online survey reports that most employees are unfamiliar with such basic search techniques as synonym finder, site search, or even how to limit by timeframe or file type. As a result, Google business research queries either fail to provide the desired results or waste valuable employee time by burying key information. Boost eLearning has released a new course, Boost eLearning Google Search Training Quick Lessons, that focuses exclusively on these and other key business research techniques, saving companies valuable employee time and materially improving search results.

"With this survey, it's apparent that many of Google's basic search functions are simply unknown among a vast number of workers," said Victor D. Alhadeff, CEO of Boost eLearning. "Hundreds of millions of Google searches are performed each day, creating a critical need to address this universal problem in the workplace. We're excited to launch Boost eLearning Google Search Training Quick Lessons. This course includes 15 skills-based lessons that average three minutes per lesson. These lessons help employees become proficient in a wide array of search practices, including queries they didn't know were possible."

In 2008, a similar Boost eLearning study reported that 39 percent of all Google searches fail, leading to more than 40 hours of lost productivity per user per year. The current survey sought to identify the reasons behind these statistics, and it indicates that 61 percent of employees don't know how to return results that include synonyms of search terms and 56 percent of respondents are unable to search within a single Web site. Fifty-four percent do not know how to search within a specific timeframe and 50 percent can't search by a specific file type (i.e. doc, ppt, etc.). In fact, more than a quarter of respondents are unable to even search for a basic phrase, a powerful query that limits search results to words in a particular order.

Google is an extremely powerful business research tool, but employees that lack basic instruction on its use are both losing time and missing opportunities, which could far exceed the value of the lost hours. Boost eLearning's Quick Lessons are designed to help companies get workers rapidly up to business research speed, with minimal cost and disruption.

Quick Lessons are geared toward training participants that need to learn Google's key search techniques as quickly as possible. Each two to four minute lesson is presented in an easy to understand manner, empowering workers to quickly master and retain the content of each lesson. For increased convenience, the course's 15 lessons can be taken individually or all together in about 60 minutes. With Boost eLearning's Google Search Training Quick Lessons, employees will improve their business research by learning how to search by phrase, geographic area, date range, file type and much more.

To obtain complete survey results or a complimentary Google Skills Assessment for employees, contact Boost eLearning at info@boostelearning.com or 206-839-8573.

About Boost eLearning

Boost eLearning is a pioneer in tools that help today's Internet-dependent workforce develop savvy business research skills. Targeted to training and development (T&D) professionals, Boost eLearning Google Search Training quickly teaches an organization's workers how to command faster, more accurate results from Google. Leveraging the fundamentals of adult-learning theory, Boost eLearning's courses instill in workers the repertory of search skills required to extract and harness targeted business information by performing queries they never knew were possible. To learn more about how Boost eLearning is empowering workers to turn the Web's expansive body of free intelligence into actionable information, visit www.boostelearning.com.

NOTE: Boost eLearning is a trademark of Boost eLearning, LLC. All other registered or unregistered trademarks are the sole property of their respective owners.

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