Related papers: Is googling risky? A study on risk perception and …
Internet users highly rely on and trust web search engines, such as Google, to find relevant information online. However, scholars have documented numerous biases and inaccuracies in search outputs. To improve the quality of search results,…
Information availability affects people's behavior and perception of the world. Notably, people rely on search engines to satisfy their need for information. Search engines deliver results relevant to user requests usually without being or…
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…
Users rely on search engines for information in critical contexts, such as public health emergencies. Understanding how users evaluate the trustworthiness of search results is therefore essential. Research has identified rank and the…
More and more people use the Internet to work on duties of their daily work routine. To find the right information online, Web search engines are the tools of their choice. Apart from finding facts, people use Web search engines to also…
Search engines have become key media for our scientific, economic, and social activities by enabling people to access information on the Web in spite of its size and complexity. On the down side, search engines bias the traffic of users…
The Web is an important resource for understanding and diagnosing medical conditions. Based on exposure to online content, people may develop undue health concerns, believing that common and benign symptoms are explained by serious…
Search engines are the preferred tools for finding information on the Web. They are advancing to be the common helpers to answer any of our search needs. We use them to carry out simple look-up tasks and also to work on rather time…
Search engines could consistently favor certain values over the others, which is considered as biased due to the built-in infrastructures. Many studies have been dedicated to detect, control, and mitigate the impacts of the biases from the…
If popular online platforms systematically expose their users to partisan and unreliable news, they could potentially contribute to societal issues like rising political polarization. This concern is central to the echo chamber and filter…
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…
This article investigates privacy risks to those visiting health- related web pages. The population of pages analyzed is derived from the 50 top search results for 1,986 common diseases. This yielded a total population of 80,124 unique…
Online platforms have transformed the way in which individuals access and interact with news, with a high degree of trust particularly placed in search engine results. We use web tracked behavioral data across a 2-month period and analyze…
Digital commerce thrives on advertising, with many of the largest technology companies relying on it as a significant source of revenue. However, in the context of information-seeking behavior, such as search, advertising may degrade the…
Major search engines deploy personalized Web results to enhance users' experience, by showing them data supposed to be relevant to their interests. Even if this process may bring benefits to users while browsing, it also raises concerns on…
Digital technologies have positively transformed society, but they have also led to undesirable consequences not anticipated at the time of design or development. We posit that insights into past undesirable consequences can help…
Algorithmic recourse provides explanations that help users overturn an unfavorable decision by a machine learning system. But so far very little attention has been paid to whether providing recourse is beneficial or not. We introduce an…
Survey-based studies suggest that search engines are trusted more than social media or even traditional news, although cases of false information or defamation are known. In this study, we analyze query suggestion features of three search…
Search engine results depend not only on the algorithms but also on how users interact with them. However, factors affecting the selection of a search query remain understudied. Using a representative survey of Swiss citizens before a round…
Web search is an integral part of our daily lives. Recently, there has been a trend of personalization in Web search, where different users receive different results for the same search query. The increasing level of personalization is…