Many students are trusting information only because it shows up first in a search. Image: Flickr / danardvincente / CC-BY
The term “digital native” is often used to describe the generation that is entirely comfortable with technology. New studies, however, have shown that these so-called digital natives trust pagerank over actual authority indicators.
First rank as authority
In a small-scale study of about 1,000 students, researchers studied how students find and sort search engine results. When asked to find a certain piece of information, more than 25 percent of students chose to visit a particular website for the information only because it was the first search result for the information. Of all the students surveyed, 90 percent made zero mention of the author’s credibility or reliability.
Demographics of the study
All of the students that are a part of the study were considered “digital natives,” meaning that they had grown up with and were entirely comfortable with technology. The students are ethnically and racially diverse, though they are all first-year college students at a state college in Chicago.
The first step in searching
When asked to find a piece of information, all students chose first and foremost to type their query into a search engine. Most students used the search engine’s name as a verb, saying they plan on “googling” or “yahooing” the search.
What this means for marketers
This news is both good and bad for those who rely on search engine optimization and marketing to bring home the bacon. As searchers place more trust in search providers, appearing in the top results is more important. However, search providers big and small are adjusting rankings to give preference to higher quality content that is truly useful to customers searching for it. Put simply, it highlights the need to provide content that users want and need, not content targeted for search engines specifically.
