2021/01/22 by Sebastian Schultheiß, Dirk Lewandowski, Schultheiß, Sebastian +1
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #68P20 #FOS: Computer and information sciences #H.3.3 #Information Retrieval (cs.IR) #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Privacy, Security, and Data Protection #Social Media and Politics #acm:68P20 #cs.IR #msc:68P20
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2101.09159
18 pages, 5 figures, 7 tables, 1 appendix
openalex publication_date 2021/01/22 · arxiv created 2021/03/15 · arxiv updated 2021/03/16 · openalex created_date 2022/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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 = 2,012 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. 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.