The purpose of this case study was to determine how trustworthy users believed Google was in ranking their search results. Google was chosen for its popularity in modern culture as well as the subjects’ previous knowledge and experience in using it. The researchers of the study were interested in discovering whether the site’s success is due to the efficiency of its ranking as opposed to the users’ trust in the results provided to them. The intentions of the results were to provide information on designing better search engines as well as research the influence search engines have on society and culture today.
Twenty-two undergraduate students at Cornell University were asked to participate in the study. The participants were students from several different areas of study, admitted to using Google as a primary search engine, and all reported a tendency to trust the results that Google generates. By the end of the study, sixteen complete data sets were collected for analysis.
The students were given ten search tasks to conduct using Google. Half of the tasks were navigational in nature, requiring the participants to find specific websites. The other tasks were informational, asking the students to find a specific piece of information. The participants’ trust in Google’s results was then tested using two methods. First, researchers used eye tracking methods to evaluate the importance of the position of abstracts in the participants’ judgment of relevance. The eye-tracking device was able to measure eye movements and track which abstracts the subject seemed to give the most attention.
The second method required setting up a proxy server that manipulated the order of Google’s ranked results. One group of students was asked to complete the search tasks under normal conditions, while another group was unknowingly asked to conduct searches where the top ranked result was switched with the second in the list. Yet a third group completed the study under “reversed” conditions: the first result in the list was switched with the tenth abstract while the second result was switched with the ninth abstract.
Using eye-tracking, researchers found that students conducting searches under the “reversed” manipulation spent a greater amount of time checking each page, made more fixations on different abstracts and returned to previously viewed abstracts a greater amount of times. They also found that in the “reversed” manipulation, students still clicked on what appeared to be the first ranked abstract three times more often than they clicked on the abstract that was originally ranked first by Google algorithms. When students were unable to find the correct website or information, they most often blamed themselves and their search terms.
The researchers of this study concluded that their results suggest users put a high amount of trust in Google’s ability to rank relevance. This study and its results are important in the study of mass communication as it illustrates the dependency society has on the media to provide us with correct, relevant, and convenient information whenever we desire it.
The results of this study are extremely helpful in understanding cultural studies and theories in relation to mass communication. These cultural studies are often used in evaluating modern communication and examine how culture is produced and influenced through current ideologies. With new developments in technology we have evolved into a culture that has come to expect accurate and fast information through the use of search engines. This study helps us to understand how we often interact with these tools, and demonstrates the trust that we put into their ability to provide us with the results we need. Google has become a cultural tool of this dominant ideology experienced in our society.
I found this case study to be extremely relevant and academic. As mass media and communication continues to evolve and be discussed, it is important to understand how we are influenced by modern technology and the services it can provide. Recognizing our unquestioning confidence in the abilities of search engines can help society become more informed and critical consumers of the medium.
The authors conducted a thorough and convincing study in order to collect their results. The use of a control group that reinforced which abstracts were most relevant created validity in their findings, as did their use of scientific methods, such as eye-tracking. In analyzing the article however, I did question how accurate eye-tracking is and has been in past studies. I would have liked to further explore whether eye-tracking has been known to produce reliable results.
Throughout my analysis I also questioned the scope of the study. The researchers conducted the study in an artificial environment, which could have affected the behavior of the participants and caused inaccurate data. The participants were also all college students of the same age demographic, chosen from the same university. In my opinion this created too narrow of a scope for this particular study, as different generations have different cultures and habits on the internet. I believe the results of the study could have been altered if it had been conducted on other, more diverse age groups or on participants from different geographical locations. At the beginning of the study, participants also admitted already feeling a level of trust toward Google’s results, and I would be interested in knowing whether more cynical users would produce different findings.
Overall, I believe that the information gathered from this study can be used to produce additional studies on this topic. By expanding the scope of the study, researchers can utilize the methods from this project to obtain even greater and more extensive results. The study has clearly proven that there is a strong correlation between Google’s ability to rank the relevance of search abstracts and users’ trust in those results. Above all, the study has provided insight into social and cultural expectations of search engines on the internet and has given users a clearer look at how we use this technology.
References
Pan, B., Hembrooke, H., Joachims, T., Lorigo, L., Gay, G. & Granka, L. (2007). In Google we
trust: Users' decisions on rank, position, and relevance. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(3), article 3.
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