Information needs analysis is the step of working out exactly what you need to know before you begin searching. A few minutes spent clarifying the question saves hours of aimless searching — you can’t find a good answer until you know your real question.

The second lesson — and the one almost everyone is tempted to skip.

Here’s a confession most of us could make: when we need to find something out, we rush straight to the search box. Topic in, hit enter, go. It feels productive. But it’s a bit like setting off on a journey before deciding where you’re going — you’ll certainly move, just probably not towards where you needed to be.

This lesson is about the quiet first step that saves the most time of all: working out what you actually need before you go looking for it.

Four questions worth thirty seconds

Before you search, pause and ask yourself:

  • What do I actually need to know? Try saying it in one sentence.
  • Why — a quick answer, a decision, a whole assignment? This sets how deep to go.
  • How much is enough — one solid source, or twenty?
  • What kind of source fits — a news report, a dataset, a peer-reviewed study, a how-to guide?

Compare the two: “I need something on climate” drops you into a swamp of two million results. “I need recent figures on how changing rainfall is affecting maize yields in northern Nigeria, for a 2,000-word essay” practically tells you where to go. Same topic, completely different search.

From a question to a handful of words

Search engines don’t read sentences; they match words. So pull the two or three real concepts out of your question and let the filler fall away.

From question to search terms
Your question: “How does social media use affect the mental health of teenagers?”
The filler: how, does, the, of — gone.
The concepts that matter: social media · teenagers (or adolescents) · mental health.
Those three words are your search — not the whole sentence.
Try this
Take something you genuinely need to look up this week. Write it as one clear sentence, then underline the two or three words you’d actually type into a search. Notice how much sharper it already feels.

Get this step right and the next one — actually finding the stuff — becomes far easier. That’s where we’re headed next, in Finding Information.

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Last modified: Friday, 5 June 2026, 8:36 AM