The Internet may be one of the best sources of information but many people spend hours if not days trawling through it for elusive facts and figures.

Now you can pay someone to do it for you.

And the idea is the brainchild of former Bradford University student Hannah Reynolds, 24, who was so fed up of searching for information on the Internet, she set up her own company to do it.

Instead of using automated search engines such as Yahoo, Zarr Answers employs human researchers to locate answers to specific questions.

"It's funny with the Internet - sometimes you can stumble on things immediately or it can take absolutely hours," said Mrs Reynolds.

"We saw that companies were spending a lot of money allowing their staff to look for information. Even computer technicians who cost about £40 an hour can spend half a day searching for something.

"And I know from experience that normal search engines can come up with thousands of sites, some of them really dodgy."

After graduating with a degree in business management, Mrs Reynolds worked for a Swiss bank, sometimes spending up to 16 hours a day searching on the Internet.

She eventually set up her answering service in January after working on an IT project with her husband in Switzerland. A team of five researchers currently guarantee to answer an enquiry within 24 hours for £7.50.

"We've already had some strange requests," she said. "We had a request for a biography of a 1920s actress which appears quite simple, but in fact was hard to find.

"And the first one we had was from a bar in Ohio which was looking for an authentic bagpipe player. You start to wonder whether people are winding you up."

Zarr Answers can be found at www.zarr.com.

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