Open AccessMisplaced trust? The relationship between trust, ability to identify commercially influenced results and search engine preference
Author(s) -
Sebastian Schultheiß,
Dirk Lewandowski
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of information science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.499
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1741-6485
pISSN - 0165-5515
DOI - 10.1177/01655515211014157
Subject(s) - computer science , search engine , preference , the internet , contradiction , internet privacy , world wide web , ranking (information retrieval) , knowledge management , information retrieval , philosophy , epistemology , economics , microeconomics
People have a high level of trust in search engines, especially Google, but only limited knowledge of them, as numerous studies have shown. This leads to the question: To what extent is this trust justified considering the lack of familiarity among users with how search engines work and the business models they are founded on? We assume that trust in Google, search engine preferences and knowledge of result types are interrelated. To examine this assumption, we conducted a representative online survey with n = 2012 German Internet users. We show that users with little search engine knowledge are more likely to trust and use Google than users with more knowledge. A contradiction revealed itself – users strongly trust Google, yet they are unable to adequately evaluate search results. For those users, this may be problematic since it can potentially affect knowledge acquisition. Consequently, there is a need to promote user information literacy to create a more solid foundation for user trust in search engines. The impact of our study lies in emphasising the need for creating appropriate training formats to promote information literacy.