Possible errors in searching the INCI data-bank
Spelling mistakes and incorrect ingredient declaration may be reasons for failure to find items in the INCI data-bank.

Spelling mistakes:
Many INCI terms are wonderful verbal monstrosities. Often, such lengthy terms are variously hyphenated or written as one word. Mistakes also sometimes slip in with simpler words such as Camelia sinensis, with Camelia becoming Camellia. In practice, differently written INCI terms occur very frequently.
Thus the forms coco-glucoside and coco-betaine are correct, but often the hyphen is missing (coco glucoside, coco betaine) or both words are written as one (cocoglucoside, cocobetaine). Mistakes such as these can make searching difficult, or even prevent it.

Incorrect ingredient declaration:
This scarcely ever occurs in large companies, but is much more common in small companies. There are, in the main, two types of incorrect ingredient declaration:

1. A comma incorrectly included in the INCI product list. Example: ceteareth-60 myristyl glycol is a single INCI term. When a comma is inadvertently inserted, then it becomes two separate terms: ceteareth-60, myristyl glycol.

2. Occasionally two ingredients are declared on one line, such as dicaprylyl ether (and) lauryl alcohol or dicaprylyl ether & lauryl alcohol. Not only is this technically incorrect, but it does not comply with ingredient declaration regulations. In the INCI list, the position of an ingredient corresponds to the amount contained in the product concerned. Dicaprylyl ether must therefore be declared alone (in the correct position in the list), and likewise, lauryl alcohol. This type of incorrect declaration can mean that something cannot be found in the data-bank.

3. Using abbreviations instead of the correct term in full is also a bad habit, for example, writing m-paraben instead of methylparaben. M-paraben does not appear as an INCI term and so it cannot be found in the data bank. Fortunately, such abbreviations are rare.