An Empirical Investigation On Search Engine Ad Disclosure

2017/10/23 by Dirk Lewandowski, Friederike Kerkmann, Lewandowski, Dirk +5 · 1 citation
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Digital Marketing and Social Media #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Information Retrieval (cs.IR) #Information Retrieval and Search Behavior #Misinformation and Its Impacts

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1710.08389

openalex publication_date 2017/10/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

This representative study of German search engine users (N=1,000) focuses on the ability of users to distinguish between organic results and advertisements on Google results pages. We combine questions about Google's business with task-based studies in which users were asked to distinguish between ads and organic results in screenshots of results pages. We find that only a small percentage of users is able to reliably distinguish between ads and organic results, and that user knowledge of Google's business model is very limited. We conclude that ads are insufficiently labelled as such, and that many users may click on ads assuming that they are selecting organic results.

Cited by

• Algorithmic interception: ad-tech, climate, and the case of Canada’s oil sands

Related

• The Influence of Commercial Intent of Search Results on Their Perceived Relevance
• Sponsored is the New Organic: Implications of Sponsored Results on Quality of Search Results in the Amazon Marketplace
• Misplaced trust? The relationship between trust, ability to identify commercially influenced results and search engine preference
• What Users See - Structures in Search Engine Results Pages
• Automated Experiments on Ad Privacy Settings: A Tale of Opacity, Choice,\n and Discrimination