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Study Cites Blissful Ignorance
Wired reports on a study performed by the Pew Internet and American Life Project that only one in six users on search engines can tell the difference between organic search results and paid advertisements.
Ready for this?
According to the Wired analysis:
But only 38 percent of web searchers even know of the distinction, and of those, not even half –47 percent — say they can always tell which are paid. That comes out to only 18 percent of all web searchers knowing when a link is paid.
Forty-five percent of web searchers say they would stop using search engines if they thought they weren’t being clear about such payments, yet 92 percent of internet searchers say they are confident about their abilities.
The irony is not lost on me that nearly half the respondants would give up their search engine if they weren’t being clear on such financial arrangements. It leaves me with more questions than answers.
- How these people would feel about affiliate marketing?
- How much disclosure should a publisher make before they cross the ethical line?
- How much T.V. watching this sample does?
- How much of search engine advertising revenue and affiliate marketing revenue is propped up by this confusion?
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Massive Charade or Effective Strategy?
Alright, Porter, I’ll bite on this. I’m sitting here sipping my morning tea reading the Wired piece… again and again. I keep shaking my head, asking myself “Doesn’t this mean that what we’ve done (in building an industry) is a massive charade?” How c…
Then again, how many of these people know what a search engine is? From the same survey “Pew says that 108 million Americans, or 84 percent of adult Internet users, have used search engines.”
What? They’re telling me that 16% of American Internet users have NEVER used a search engine? If they said it was 2% I *might* believe them…