It is true that those who is connected to freeloaders won't see the query.
But thats not an error its a feature!

OK, time for some mathematics. Say you send out a query with TTL (time to live) 4. Lets say everyone is connected to 3 hosts.

The old, inefficient and stupid way:
Your query will reach 3**4 + 3**3 + 3**2 + 3**1 = 81 + 27 + 9 + 3 = 120. But since only 30% of these are sharing, the sharing hosts you reach is 36.
The network is fed with 120 queries, and you reach 36 hosts that have more than one file to share.

The new, efficient and Smart way:
Since only one of the three hosts is sharing, you only send the query to that host. He again, sends it only to the sharing hosts in his list as well. This means that you can send a query with a TTL of 120 and still cause as much network traffic as the old way. Since this will reach 120 sharing hosts, you will reach 3.33 times as many files as the old method.

This is obvious!
Stig