Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

In Google We Trust: Users’ Decisions on

Rank, Position, and Relevance
Bing Pan
School of Business and Economics
College of Charleston

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Helene Hembrooke
Human-Computer Interaction Group
Information Science Program
Cornell University

Thorsten Joachims
Department of Computer Science
Cornell University

Lori Lorigo
Geri Gay
Laura Granka
Human-Computer Interaction Group
Information Science Program
Cornell University

An eye tracking experiment revealed that college student users have substantial trust in
Google’s ability to rank results by their true relevance to the query. When the partici-
pants selected a link to follow from Google’s result pages, their decisions were strongly
biased towards links higher in position even if the abstracts themselves were less rele-
vant. While the participants reacted to artificially reduced retrieval quality by greater
scrutiny, they failed to achieve the same success rate. This demonstrated trust in Google
has implications for the search engine’s tremendous potential influence on culture, soci-
ety, and user traffic on the Web.

doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00351.x

Introduction
Finding online information using search engines has become a part of our everyday
lives (Gordon & Pathak, 1999). Currently the search engine serving the largest
percentage of queries (at 47.3%) is Google, with an index of around 25 billion
Web pages and 250 million queries a day (Brooks, 2004; Search Engine Watch,

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association 801
2007). Google now provides search functions on handheld devices and smart phones
(Google Inc., 2005a). With the ubiquitous presence of mobile devices, anytime and
anywhere access to the information world has become a reality. Other popular search
engines include Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and [Link], and all serve the pervasive need of
finding pertinent information within the enormity of the Web. Despite the popu-
larity of search engines, most users are not aware of how they work and know little
about the implications of their algorithms (Gerhart, 2004).
All of the search engines noted above respond to a query with a ranked list of 10
abstracts in their default setting. The ranking reflects the search engines’ estimated

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relevance of Web pages to the query. Individual search engines vary by both under-
lying ranking implementation, and also by various characteristics of how they display
the ranked results, and any additional support they provide for finding related Web
pages. Users can evaluate the abstracts, or other information displayed about a given
result, before deciding whether to visit any of the suggested pages by clicking on
a hyperlink. In this study, we chose to use Google because of the frequency of its use,
the simplicity of its display of query results (which can serve as a common basis when
compared to many other search engines), and our prior experience studying Web
search on Google (Granka, Joachims, & Gay, 2004). We also confined the study to
only one search engine to ensure a constant visual display on which we could analyze
and interpret the subjects’ eye movements.
The information search process is made possible through three parties: Web
authors, the search engines themselves, and the users of search engines. The Web
authors put their Web pages online with appropriate linking to other pages. The link
structure has been used by popular search engine algorithms (Brin & Page, 1998) that
can take advantage of this structure to rank relevant Web pages. Users of search
engines enter various keywords (sometimes with Boolean commands) according to
their understanding of the task and the functionality of the search engine, and they
evaluate the results returned by the search engine, making a decision on whether or
not to select one of the returned results or reformulate the query. Search engines act
as an information intermediary that facilitates the information seeking process.
However, how well a Web page actually reflects the users’ search intentions is
hard to measure. For example, the ranking algorithm of Google uses a page’s mea-
sure of in-links to help inform its quality and relevance (Pandey, Roy, Olston, Cho, &
Chakrabarti, 2005). Some have argued that those algorithms, such as PageRank,
simply set up a rich-get-richer loop, whereby a relatively few sites dominate the
top ranks (Hindman, Tsiotsioliklis, & Johnson, 2003). Retrievability and visibility
represent only part of the search process. We wondered what role the user plays in
perpetuating this rich-get-richer dynamic. Particularly, we wondered how much of
the correlation between Web traffic and site popularity (Hindman et al., 2003) is due
to the alleged efficiency of these algorithms as opposed to users’ tendency to simply
trust the ranked output displayed by a search engine and forego any in-depth analysis
or comparisons of the retrieved results. More importantly, Google’s imperfect algo-
rithm is open to abuses such as Google bombing (Tatum, 2005; see also Bar-Ilan, this

802 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association
issue). This might deliver erroneous messages to a large population when the search-
ers trust Google without questioning its underlying ranking mechanism.
Our curiosity regarding this question was piqued by an earlier study conducted
by Granka et al. (2004). Their results indicated that most student subjects only view
and click the top two results returned by Google. The design of this earlier study did
not tease apart whether those choices were the result of the top positions of the two
abstracts as influenced by Google’s ranking algorithm, or if those were truly the most
relevant results as evaluated by the subjects. We were interested in finding out
whether a user’s choice of a particular abstract was based on the position of that

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abstract, the user’s evaluation of the relevance of that abstract, or a combination of
the two.
In order to explore the relative contribution of relevance and position, we
employed eye tracking as the methodology in the current study. Eye tracking devices
are able to record eye movements and reveal subjects’ attention and cognitive process.
In areas of cognitive psychology, human-computer interaction, and marketing, eye
tracking methods have been used for decades (Rayner, 1998). We use eye tracking to
investigate how users make decisions when confronted with returned Google results
following a query. Eye tracking adds meaning to the more traditional log file or click
behavior analysis. It allows for a more complete assessment of the information-
seeking process by revealing which query result abstracts users looked at, or were
aware of, before selecting a query result or refining their query. This article provides
behavioral evidence that sheds light on the influential factors in the evaluation
process of search engine uses.

Related Research
The hypertext nature of the Web has changed how people search and access infor-
mation (Bilal & Kirby, 2002). It is imperative to understand user behavior on the
Web in order to design better search engines. This section describes past research on
user behavior and search engines. The relevant literature is organized into three
parts: past research on user behavior and search engines, past eye tracking research
related to Web viewing behavior, and a review of the major results of the first Google
eye tracking study the authors conducted, which provided the basis for the current
eye tracking study.

User Behavior and Search Engines

Most of what is known about user behavior and search engines comes from Web log
analysis and clickthrough analysis. These studies are descriptive in nature and report
general user behavior (Bilal & Kirby, 2002). For example, most users input two or
three terms in search engines, they rarely go to the second page of results, and most
of the time they only click on one document in the result set (Jansen, Spink,
Bateman, & Saracevic, 2000). Furthermore, different user groups use search engines
differently. For example, children and adults have different information search

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association 803
strategies and different success rates (Bilal & Kirby, 2002), and search engine users in
the U.S. and Europe engage in different search behaviors (Jansen & Spink, 2004).
Spink and Ozmultu (2002) discuss the characteristics of searching using question-
type queries and identify four distinct types. Other researchers show the differences
of search behavior over the course of time (Jansen, Spink, & Pedersen, 2005;
Ozmutlu, Spink, & Ozmutlu, 2004). Hsieh-Yee’s (2001) review of the literature
summarizes research on user behavior focusing on search patterns and many studies
that have investigated the effects of selected factors on search behavior, including
information organization and presentation, type of search task (Lorigo et al., 2005),

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Web experience, cognitive abilities, and affective states.

Eye Tracking and the Web

Studies of eye movements date back to work by Javal in 1879 (Huey, 1908), and over
time they have informed fundamental facts about eye movements, behavioral and
experimental psychology, and human-computer interaction, an application that is
greatly benefiting from advances in the ease and accuracy of eye trackers. In a typical
user study, the subject is calibrated to the eye tracking device by the researcher asking
the subject to look at specific targets while the software configures the respective target
locations. This is done by sending a weak infrared light to the subject’s eye and mea-
suring the light reflection on the screen. The result is that eye movements on a computer
screen can be recorded, with a high degree of accuracy, for the majority of people.
Ocular behavior on Web pages has been the focus of several recent studies,
including eye movement research on news websites (Stanford-Poynter Project,
2000), analysis of scanpaths (sequences of eye gazes) on Web pages (Josephson &
Holmes, 2002), ocular behavior of Web users completing tasks on a Web portal page
(Goldberg, Stimson, Lewenstein, Scott, & Wichansky, 2002), and eye movement
behavior on several types of websites (Pan et al., 2004). The Stanford-Poynter Project
(1998) investigated reading behavior on news websites and concluded that text
was frequently the first entry point for a majority of online news readers. Rayner,
Rottello, Stewart, Keir, and Duffy (2001) reported similar findings in which viewers
of print advertisements spent more time on text than pictures. Josephson and
Holmes (2002) studied the eye viewing behavior on three different Web pages. They
concluded that users develop habitually preferred scanpaths and that features of
websites and memory might be important in determining those scanpaths.
Goldberg et al. (2002) used eye tracking methods to test the performance of
subjects in completing several tasks on a Web portal page. Their research demon-
strated the characteristics of subjects’ eye movements on that portal page. This
research gave rise to implications for improving the design of the Web portal. Pan
et al. (2004) showed that gender, website types, and the interaction between search
sequence and website type all affect Web viewing behavior. For example, female
subjects had shorter mean fixation durations than males; the subjects had longer
mean fixation durations on the first Web pages viewed than the second ones; and
the subjects spent more time gazing on the first pages than on the second ones. In

804 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association
general, as an indicator of information processing, eye movements on Web pages are
influenced by both individual variables, such as gender, and the characteristics of the
stimuli, such as the layout and content of Web pages. The current study combines
eye tracking with clickstream data in order to make inferences regarding the impact
of positions versus judged relevance on decision-making processes involved in infor-
mation search. By doing so, we gain an in-depth understanding of how users evaluate
search results and the factors that influence their choices.

Previous Eye Tracking Search Research

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In general, knowing how users evaluate result pages through eye tracking methods
can help researchers to understand users’ motivations, tasks, and cognitive processes.
Understanding this evaluation and decision-making will enable correct interpreta-
tion of Web log files as feedback data and thereby improve search engine perfor-
mance (Joachims, 2002). As a result, it may be possible to design Web-based
information retrieval systems to better satisfy user needs.
In the study conducted by Granka et al. (2004), 10 tasks were devised, ranging
from informational tasks such as ‘‘Who discovered the first antibiotics?’’ to naviga-
tional tasks such as ‘‘Find the homepage of Emeril - the chef who has a TV cooking
program.’’ Informational tasks require finding a particular fact, while navigational
tasks involve searching for a particular Web page (Broder, 2002). Among the 10
tasks, some were inspired by popular topics from Google Zeitgeist, while others
covered local or specialized topics. Google Zeitgeist (Google Inc., 2005b) is a report
provided by Google that reveals the most popular queries or other related trends
about the queries Google receives. Our resulting mix of popular and specialized
topics was an effort to simulate a likely query task situation.
In Granka et al. (2004), the subjects were given the 10 tasks in random order and
asked to start with Google and search for answers with a limit of three minutes for
each task. The time constraint allowed for the collection of a substantial amount of
eye tracking data for each task and also minimized the total time required of each
subject. Most subjects voluntarily stopped the search tasks in the given amount of
time. In this earlier study, complete eye tracking data were obtained for 23 subjects.
The results showed that the subjects viewed the top two abstracts almost equally
often and much more often than any other abstract. However, they clicked the
number one ranked abstracts significantly more often than the number two ranked
abstract (Granka et al., 2004). This behavior prompted us to ask whether the subjects
were simply defaulting to Google’s ranked results, or if their decisions were based on
some critical evaluation of the results.

Research Methods and Design

In the present study, rank refers to the original sequence of abstracts returned by
Google. Lower ranks indicate that the Web pages are less relevant as judged by
Google’s algorithm and thus placed later in the sequence; position represents the

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association 805
actual physical locations of the abstracts on the Google results page, for example,
from top to bottom (1 to 10) on the first Google result page; relevance represents the
subjective judgments of the likelihood that the information piece is related to the
answer of the question or the goal of a search task. In this study, we obtain relevance
through human judgments of the abstracts returned by Google (abstract relevance),
as well as the pages associated with those abstracts (Web page relevance). Judgment
data were important to ensure that all of the 10 results were not equally relevant.
Based on the findings from our previous study (Granka et al., 2004), the current
work was designed to exploit Google’s ranking function in order to investigate how

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much the subjects rely on Google’s ranking to make their decisions about relevance.
Unbeknown to the subjects, we manipulated the order of Google’s returned results in
some cases, such that abstracts of actual lower ranked Web pages appeared higher in
position and vice versa. Thus, choosing a lower ranked abstract that is in a higher
position in the Google results page but is evaluated to be less relevant by human
judges would be evidence that the subjects have assigned priority to Google’s ‘‘exper-
tise’’ over the actual relevance of the abstract.
This section introduces eye tracking as a methodology and introduces the details
of the research methods and procedures used in the current study. A laboratory
setting was necessary to capture all aspects of the search sessions and related eye
movements, in order to compare the variables across all subjects systematically.
Although some scholars have argued that external validity is compromised in a lab-
oratory setting, previous studies have shown that in laboratory settings and Web
settings there are few or no differences in the subjects’ behavior on information
search, especially on those tasks using keywords (Epstein, Klinkenberg, Wiley, &
McKinley, 2001; Schulte-Mecklenbeck & Huber, 2003).

The Subjects
In this study, participants were undergraduate students with various majors (includ-
ing communication, engineering, and arts and sciences) at Cornell University
(U.S.A.). All students were given extra class credit for their participation in the
experiment. Twenty-two subjects were recruited, and 16 complete data sets, includ-
ing 11 males and 5 females, were obtained. Attrition was due to random recording
difficulties and the inability of some subjects to be calibrated precisely.2 The average
age of participating subjects was 20 years and 4 months. All subjects reported that
they used Google as their primary search engine and had a high familiarity with the
Google interface (all scored 10 out of 10); when asked about the levels of trust in
Google, they reported an average of 7.9 (out of 10). Thus, our subjects, in general, are
savvy users of Google and tend to trust Google to a high degree.

Search Tasks
Ten search tasks were included in this study, each of which addressed a unique aspect
of the information retrieval experience. Half of the searches were navigational
in nature, asking subjects to find a specific Web page or homepage. These were

806 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association
definitive searches, meaning that only one correct Web page would provide an
acceptable answer. The other five tasks were informational, asking subjects to find
a specific bit of information (Broder, 2002). Much of the content for the tasks was
generated according to the content of top searches listed on Google Zeitgeist (Google
Inc., 2005b). Our purpose was to ensure that the tasks in this experiment represented
the various genres of searches that the general population uses on a regular basis,
including travel, movies, current events, celebrities, and local issues. These tasks were
also pre-tested to ensure that the most intuitive queries would not always result in
top-ranked results; therefore, the findings should be interpreted in light of the fact

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that these queries are on average more difficult than a subject’s typical query. The
following table is a brief description of the 10 search tasks included in the experiment
and the correct answers to these tasks (Table 1).

Experimental Procedure
All participants were required to give informed written consent prior to the start of
the experiment. Before the actual experiment, the eye tracker was calibrated using
a nine-point standard calibration procedure for each subject (Duchowski, 2003).
Participants were instructed to search for the 10 different tasks through the Google
interface. Subjects were told to view the Web pages and search as they typically would
under normal conditions, with the opportunity to scroll up and down the page at
their leisure.3 The experimenter sat to the right of and behind the subject, where she
was able to watch the subject, the subject’s eye, and also the corresponding eye
movements on the two control monitors. If the experimenter recognized that the
eye tracking system temporarily lost a subject’s eye path due to extreme movements,
she could re-center and if appropriate, perform a quick recalibration fix. This hap-
pened rarely and randomly; it did not interrupt the experimental session since the
experimenter could perform the quick fix in a few milliseconds.
The 10 search tasks were read aloud to the subject by the experimenter to eliminate
unnecessary eye movements away from the computer monitor; such eye movements
could potentially hinder the accuracy of the ocular calibration. Typically, due to the
monitor size, scrolling was required to view abstracts ranked seven and higher on the
Google results pages. To eliminate the potential bias from question order effects, all
search questions were completely randomized for all subjects. The maximum time for
completing each task was restricted to three minutes. As before, the time constraint
allowed for a sufficient amount of eye tracking data to be collected for each task and
also minimized the total time required of each subject. The most important data for
this study come from how each subject responds and interacts with the 10 results
following each query and not from the full completion of the task itself.

Design
Because Google is continuously updating its search algorithms, one specific query
will not produce the same exact results on two separate occasions. Because much of
the data analyses were to occur after the experimental sessions, it was necessary to

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association 807
Table 1 The 10 information search tasks
Task Type Task Correct Answer
Navigational Find the homepage of Michael [Link]
Jordan, the statistician. ~jordan/
Find the page displaying the route [Link]
map for Greyhound buses. maps/
Find the homepage of the 1000 [Link]
Acres Dude Ranch.

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Find the homepage for graduate [Link]
housing at Carnegie Mellon graduatehousing/
University
Find the homepage of [Link]
Emeril—the chef who has [Link]
a television cooking program.
Informational Where is the tallest mountain in The Adirondacks OR High Peaks
New York located? Region
With the heavy coverage of the March 2, 2004
democratic presidential
primaries, you are excited to
cast your vote for a candidate.
When are/were democratic
presidential primaries in
New York?
Which actor starred as the main Rod Taylor
character in the original Time
Machine movie?
A friend told you that Members of Llenroc, the Cornell
Mr. Cornell used to live chapter of the Delta Phi
close to campus—near Fraternity live in the mansion.
University and Steward Ave.
Does anybody live in his house
now? If so, who?
What is the name of the Alexander Fleming
researcher who discovered
the first modern antibiotic?

cache the Web pages with which the subjects actually interacted. A proxy server was
set up to mediate the interaction between the subjects and the Google Web server.
The proxy script was run on the subject’s computer and stored every search query
typed by the subjects, as well as all links and Web pages that were viewed, along with
the corresponding times that they were accessed and viewed. When the subject typed
in a query, the query was sent to the proxy server, and the proxy server relayed it to
Google. After receiving the results from Google, the proxy server manipulated the
results and passed on the modified results to the subject’s Web browser.

808 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association
 Results were modified in two ways. First, the proxy server removed the adver-
tisements on the Google results page to avoid distraction and ensure consistent
stimulus exposure across all subjects. This also saved the authors from having to
filter out eye movements on ads, since the goal of the study was concerned with
which query results were viewed and selected. Second, in order to explore the
relative contribution of relevance versus position to the decision making process,
the results were further manipulated for each subject in one of three ways. In the
‘‘Normal’’ condition, the proxy server returned the results in their original ranked
order; in the ‘‘Swapped’’ condition, the proxy server swapped the positions of

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the first ranked abstract with the second ranked abstract, keeping the rest of the
ranking intact; and in the ‘‘Reversed’’ condition, the proxy server reversed the
positions of the abstracts on the first result page as follows: The first ranked abstract
was swapped with rank 10 abstract, the rank 2 abstract was swapped with rank 9
abstract, and so on.

Eye Tracking Indices

During an eye tracking experiment, several measurements are typically recorded
that are relevant for studying college students’ interactions with search engines.
‘Fixation’ refers to a relatively stable eye-in-head position within some threshold of
dispersion (typically ;2
) over some minimum duration and with a velocity below
some threshold (typically 15–100 degrees per second). In this study, we set the
minimum duration as 50 milliseconds, as suggested in the ASL504 eye tracker
manual (Applied Science Laboratories, 2005). Eye fixations are the most relevant
metric for evaluating information processing in online search. Fixations represent
the instances in which most information acquisition and processing occurs (Rayner,
1998). The total number of fixations is often used as an indicator of processing
difficulty, with fixation density related to the complexity and informativeness
of the visual stimulus (DeGraef, De Troy, & d’Ydewalle, 1992; Friedman, 1979;
Henderson, Weeks, & Hollingsworth, 1999), such that as informativeness increases,
so too does the number of fixations in that area. In the current study, we also used
measures of the average number of fixations. A higher number of fixations on an
abstract will represent intensified information processing.
‘Pupil Dilation’ refers to widening of the pupil. It has long been known that
pupils dilate in response to emotion-evoking stimuli (Beatty, 1982). While it is also
the case that pupil size is affected by light, the lighting remained constant in our
experiment. As Rayner and others have pointed out (Rayner, 1998), using only
a single indicator of processing difficulty may result in an oversimplification of
the relationship between the indicator and processing difficulty. Hence, both fixation
and pupil dilation measures are frequently used as corroborating measures of
cognitive workload (Hess, 1965; Just & Carpenter, 1980; Kahneman, 1973). Last,
a ‘scanpath’ is the spatial arrangement of a sequence of fixations, or simply the
sequence of LookZones that a subject views, as in the present study.

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association 809
Definition of LookZones
In addition to logging the clickstream and Web page data of subjects, the script also
constructed ‘LookZones’ around key content regions. The script utilized a feature
inherent to the GazeTracker software system that automatically creates LookZones
around links and pictures, which the software recognizes within the HTML tags. (For
more information on the GazeTracker software system and the eye tracking appa-
ratus itself, see Appendix A.) Thus, the script enabled the creation of distinct Look-
Zone regions around each of the ten displayed results (Figure 1). For the analysis,
each of these displayed results on Google—abstracts in rank #1, rank #2, rank #3, to

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rank #10—is given its own set of LookZones, from which we can then compare eye
tracking behaviors across all queries, relative to these zones. LookZones were not
visible during the time participants were engaged in the experiment.

Judged Relevance
As stated above, we considered rank, position, and judged relevance in this study.
For all queries and results pages that were encountered in the study, we gathered

Figure 1 LookZone division on a Google result page

810 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association
relevance assessments of the abstracts, which allowed us to look at the choices made
by subjects as a function of the positions and judged relevance of the page chosen by
the subject in case Google’s rank did not reflect what other humans might consider
relevant. Five non-participants were chosen as the judges in the study. For each
results page, we randomized the order of the abstracts and asked judges to weakly
order the abstracts (ties were allowed) by how promising they looked for leading to
relevant. Each of five judges assessed all results pages for two questions, plus 10
results pages from two other questions, for inter-judge agreement verification. The
set of abstracts/pages we asked judges to weakly order were not limited to the

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(typically 10) hits from the first results page, rather the set included all results
encountered by a particular subject for a particular question. The inter-judge agree-
ment on the abstracts was 82.5%. Furthermore, we also collected relevance judg-
ments for the actual Web pages those abstracts represent. The inter-judge agreement
on the relevance assessment of the pages was 86.4%.

Hypotheses and Analysis

We analyzed a combination of mouse click behaviors and the various ocular indices
on three levels. On the task level, the analysis aggregates the behavior of a subject over
all queries corresponding to one task; on the page level, the choice of clicks and ocular
behavior on all pages were analyzed; on the abstract level, we analyzed the determi-
nants of whether an abstract was viewed or clicked.
Our analyses were guided by the following hypotheses:
H1: At the page level of analysis, ocular data would differ among the three conditions.

Particularly, we expected that participants in the Reversed condition would

demonstrate greater scrutiny of returned results when compared with controls,
and this would manifest itself through longer fixation times overall, greater overall
total fixations, how many abstracts were looked at per page, and visual backtracking
or regressing to earlier viewed abstracts. In addition:
H2: At the abstract level of analysis, the eye data from participants in the Reversed condition
would indicate explicit trust for Google’s ranking, as evidenced by a lack of significant
difference among the three conditions in the number of fixations per abstract on the top two
positioned abstracts. Furthermore, subjects would look at the last two positioned abstracts
(the number one and two Google ranked abstracts) more than in the other two conditions,
indicating an implicit awareness of their significance, either from confusion or interest.
This implicit awareness would also be demonstrated in subjects’ pupil dilation data.
However, we suspect that the subjects tend to trust Google as an authoritative
search engine since users mostly clicked on the first returned result in the first eye
tracking study (Granka et al., 2004) They may still click on the abstracts higher on
top even though the real relevance of those is low. Thus:
H3: Participants in both the Swapped and Reversed conditions would still choose abstracts of
actual lower rank more often than subjects in the control condition (those who viewed
Google results in their actual ranked order).

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association 811
 Thus, we anticipated dissociation between the ocular data, which would indicate
some implicit conflict between the position and the actual Google rank, yet that the
subjects would still choose a higher positioned abstract based on a greater trust in
Google’s algorithms than in their own judgment. This can be validated through
regression analysis of whether or not an abstract was clicked on, the relevance,
and the position of all abstracts.

Research Results

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Task Level Analysis
On the task level, the success rates were significantly different among the three
conditions. In the Reversed condition, subjects completed search tasks successfully
only 62% of the time, compared with 85% and 80% in the Normal and Swapped
conditions respectively (p , .05). On average, 43.1% of queries resulted in refor-
mulation of the query right away without clicking on any results. The rates of query
reformulation without clicking were not significantly different among the three
conditions.

Page Level Analysis

The researchers obtained eye tracking data from Gazetracker on all of the Web pages
the subjects viewed, along with the cache of those pages. Since our focus is on the
evaluation process of Google results pages, we specifically selected those Web pages
that are the first result pages returned by Google (containing abstracts 1–10) and on
which the subject clicked on at least one abstract, so that the evaluation process can
be obtained. The results show that subjects in the Reversed condition spent more
time checking each page (10.9 seconds vs. 6.5 seconds in the Normal condition and
5.8 seconds in the Swapped condition, p,.05), made more fixations (30.0 fixations
vs. 18.3 in the Normal condition and 17.9 in the Swapped condition, p,.05), and
checked more returned results (3.8 abstracts vs. 2.5 in the Normal condition and 2.7
in the Swapped condition, p,.05).
In addition, the viewing sequences of the abstracts were calculated based on the
subjects’ scanpaths. A regression was defined as an instance in which a subject
returns to a previously viewed abstract (see Figure 2 for an example). The number
of regressions for subjects in the Reversed condition is significantly higher than those
in the Normal and Swapped conditions (3.4, 2.2, and 1.9 in Reversed, Normal, and
Swapped conditions respectively, p,.05). In all these results, there are no significant
differences between Normal and Swapped conditions.4 All of these indices suggest
that less optimal abstracts resulted in more scrutiny. Furthermore, after the exper-
iment session was completed, subjects in the Swapped and Reverse condition were
explicitly asked if they had any feedback, followed up by a question regarding
whether everything seemed normal with the Google interface, in order to assess
whether they suspected the ruse. Comments were made such as, ‘‘I didn’t have much

812 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association
 Downloaded from [Link] by guest on 08 June 2026
Figure 2 An example of regression on a Google page

luck with several of the questions,’’ and ‘‘I just could not think of the right search
terms,’’ which reflected a tendency for subjects to blame themselves rather than the
inferior Google results.

Abstract Level Analysis

Abstract level analysis was performed using two methods. First, on a global level, we
made comparisons between views and clicks on the 10 abstracts across three con-
ditions, followed by regression analysis of the determinants of viewing and clicking
behavior. Next, we compared the three groups on a more granular level, looking at
the number of fixations and pupil dilation on a per abstract basis. In this way we were
able to infer differences among the groups in how they might be processing the
displayed rank of Google’s output.
Corresponding to the three conditions, Figure 3 illustrates which abstracts the
subjects viewed before the first click and where the first click was placed. In partic-
ular, the bars in the graphs show the percentage of result pages with at least one
fixation or click at the respective rank. In the Normal condition, the result is similar
to the study by Granka et al. (2004): The subjects viewed the two top-ranked
abstracts with the highest frequency and clicked on the number one abstract most
of the time. In the Swapped condition, the subjects also viewed the two top-ranked
abstracts almost equally. However, they still clicked on what they perceived to be the
number one ranked abstract almost three times more often than the abstract truly
ranked highest by Google (now in the number two position). It appears that
respondents were heavily influenced by the position of the abstract. In the Reversed
condition, the percentage of clicks on the abstracts positioned at rank one and two

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association 813
 Downloaded from [Link] by guest on 08 June 2026

Figure 3 Percentage of views/clicks on different ranks under three conditions

814 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association
was significantly less when compared with the other two conditions. This indicates
some degree of explicit evaluation of Google results. However, the graph is far from
being a ‘‘mirror image’’ of the Normal condition. A one-sample T-test indicated that,
similar to the Normal condition, subjects chose the top five presented abstracts
significantly more often than the bottom five abstracts (df=57, p,.01). While
subjects in the Reversed condition were somewhat more likely to view the lower
positioned abstracts, this still happened fairly infrequently.
We also compared the groups using fixation and dilation data to see how they
differed as subjects viewed the top positioned abstracts versus the 9th and 10th abstracts.

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When we compare this to what abstract(s) they ultimately chose, we are able to gain
further insight regarding the balance between trust and users’ evaluations of relevance.
The first analysis we conducted compared the average number of fixations on the
first and second positioned abstracts. The result of this analysis indicated that there
were no significant differences among the three groups in fixation density between
the top two abstracts. Thus, even among participants in the Reversed condition, who
were actually viewing the 9th and 10th ranked abstracts in these positions, the
abstracts were evaluated with equal attention. It appears, then, that these subjects
contemplated these abstracts much as they would have under normal conditions.
Next, we made comparisons among the groups on the 9th and 10th positioned
abstracts. Here we found significant differences among the groups, with subjects in
the Reversed condition making more fixations on both of these abstracts than in
either of the other two conditions (F (1, 2) = 3.53, p,.03 and F (1, 2)=3.83, p,.02,
respectively, for the 9th and 10th abstracts). When we compared the three groups
again on the average number of fixations for the number one ranked abstract (posi-
tioned number one in the Normal condition, number two in the Swapped condition,
and number 10 in the Reversed condition), there were significant differences again.
Participants in the Normal condition made more fixations on the number one
positioned abstract than the subjects in the Swapped condition made on the number
two positioned abstract. Furthermore, fixations in the Swapped condition were
significantly greater than in the Reversed Condition in response to the 10th posi-
tioned abstract. This indicates that participants in both the Swapped and Reversed
conditions were ‘‘fooled’’ by the manipulated results.
Finally, we looked at differences in pupil dilation for the subjects in the Reversed
condition, specifically focusing on how the dilation measure did or did not differ
between the first two positioned abstracts and the 9th and 10th positioned abstracts.
No significant differences in pupil dilation between the 1st and the 10th positioned
abstracts or the 2nd and the 9th positioned abstracts were noted. Again, this indicates
that attention to and interest in the least relevant but positionally first two abstracts
was equivalent to the most relevant but positionally last two abstracts (Figure 4).
How strong is the influence of position compared to the intrinsic relevance of an
abstract? To address this, we regressed viewing and clicking behavior on position and
judged relevance of the abstracts. We first used a mixed model analysis to explore the
significant determinants of viewing and clicking. The results show that significant

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association 815
 Average Dilation
54

52

50

48

46

44

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42

40
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Figure 4 Average pupil dilation across abstracts for reversed condition

determinants of whether an abstract is viewed are the order of significance, position,

relevance, condition, and query order (Table 2). Similarly, the order of significance,
position, relevance, and task type (informational task or navigational task) signifi-
cantly determines whether an abstract is clicked (Table 3). Relevance here was deter-
mined by the human judgments on the abstracts. In both models, the F values of
displayed position are always greater than the F values of relevance. In other words,
when all factors are considered, subjects trust Google’s positioning more than their
rational judgments based on the evaluation of different alternatives.

Conclusion, Limitations, and Future Research

In summary, the findings here show that college student subjects are heavily influ-
enced by the order in which the results are presented and, to a lesser extent, the actual
relevance of the abstracts. These subjects trust Google in that they click on abstracts
in higher positions even when the abstracts are less relevant to the task. When looked
at in combination, the behavioral data (clicked choices) and the ocular data indicate
that while there might be some implicit awareness of the conflict between the dis-
played position and their own evaluation of the abstracts, it is either not enough, or
not strong enough, to override the effects of displayed position.

Table 2 Test of fixed effects in the mixed model of predicting clicks from all abstracts
Fixed Effect Levels F Value Probability . F
Gender 1 1.43 0.23
Condition 2 3.61 0.03**
Query Type 1 0.03 0.86
Query Order 5 4.65 ,.01**
Position 9 137.38 ,.01**
Relevance Value 9 5.75 ,.01**
Notes: N = 4125, the total numbers of all abstracts retrieved. ** Significant at .05 level

816 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association
Table 3 Test of fixed effects in the mixed model of predicting clicks from viewed abstracts
Fixed Effect Levels F Value Probability . F
Gender 1 0.40 0.53
Condition 2 0.36 0.70
Query Type 1 8.31 0.01**
Query Order 5 0.58 .72
Position 9 12.32 ,.01**
Relevance Value 9 12.22 ,.01**

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Notes: N = 1219, the total number of abstracts viewed. ** Significant at .05 level

Trust is one mechanism humans use to reduce the complexity of decision making
in uncertain situations (Luhmann, 1989) and may be viewed as a fast and frugal
heuristic that exploits the regularity of the information environment (Gigerenzer &
Selten, 2002; Simon, 1956). Google’s information retrieval algorithm sorts the results
by an estimate of the probability that it will fulfill the user’s information need,
thereby potentially reducing the cognitive effort and time costs for searchers. In
order to determine whether trust does, in fact, lead users to the most relevant docu-
ments, we further asked human judges to rate the relevance of the actual pages
instead of the abstracts on Google results pages. Further analysis showed that under
the Normal condition, 51% of the time participants clicked on the abstracts that
represented the most relevant Web pages. If the subjects were to have simply clicked
on Google’s number one ranked abstract, in 43% of the cases that would have
resulted in them finding the most relevant Web page. Thus, trust does help the
subjects reduce time and effort costs to locate the most relevant abstracts successfully
some of the time.
What happens when users’ trust extends beyond their individual evaluation of
a set of returned results? To the extent that the PageRank algorithm works well on
any given query, the imbalance between trust and evaluation may simply mean
greater or lesser search costs, in terms of, say, time and/or effort. More critical,
perhaps, is an increased probability of misinformation, particularly in circumstances
of topic naiveté. More insidious, however, is the potential for misguided trust to
exacerbate what others already fear regarding the non-egalitarian distribution of
information (Hindman et al., 2003; Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000), whether as a result
of economic resources, indexing policies, or algorithms.
Combining users’ proclivity to trust ranked results with Google’s algorithm
increases the chances that those ‘‘already rich’’ by virtue of nepotism get ‘‘filthy rich’’
by virtue of robotic searchers. Smaller, less affluent, alternative sites are doubly
punished by ranking algorithms and lethargic searchers. A study conducted by
Cho and Roy (2004) using simulation experimented with the popularity of new
Web pages under different information access methods. They compared how one
page can become popular under two conditions: assuming all users do random surfing
online versus assuming all users access information through a popularity-based

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association 817
search engine like Google. Their results demonstrated that it takes 66 times longer for
a page to become popular under the search-engine model.
Users, as a whole, are not familiar with how search engines ‘‘find’’ what they are
looking for (Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000). The present results suggest that some
users might benefit from having more information regarding the mechanisms by
which Google and other search engines ‘‘crawl’’ the Web and determine how a web-
site is ranked. Raising awareness through design is a promising direction. This might
be accomplished on the results page of a search through a short explanation provided
to the user on how the results were ranked, or perhaps through the visualization of

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the inbound and outbound link relationships that a website has fostered. As in social
network analysis, users would be able to view central and peripheral sites, and more
importantly, trace the connections or lineage between sites to determine the interest
and relevance of a site based on its similarity to other sites and provenance. However,
this requires a delicate design balance between maintaining simplicity and adding
information content on search engine interfaces.
The limitations of this study lie primarily in its experimental nature. Research
shows that information searching in a lab setting can be generalized to a larger
context (Epstein et al., 2001; Schulte-Mecklenbeck & Huber, 2003). However, the
subjects in the current study were all undergraduate students, in the same age group,
who used Google as their primary search engine, and who trusted Google greatly;
they conducted information searches in a lab setting on artificially designed search
tasks. The applicability of the study results to a broader range of users and contexts is
thus limited.
Google was chosen as the test search engine for the reasons described earlier; the
generalization to other search engines is also limited. In a follow-up study we intend
to investigate the generalizability of these effects with different existing search
engines as well as with one that we contrive on our own, with no known history
or a-priori influence on subjects. In this way we will be able to explore the perva-
siveness of this trust and whether (and if so, how much) user trust transfers to other
search engine contexts. In addition, we intend to recruit participants from different
age groups, cultures, and search expertise, since our current study was limited to
a group of college students and may not extend outside of that group.
Another promising direction is more refined analysis of the eye tracking data
within the framework of information foraging theory (Pirrolli & Card, 1999), espe-
cially with respect to the cost of clicking and viewing lower ranked abstracts, as well
as the value of information sent. In the meantime, as one of the first studies to
explore evaluation processes in Web search, this study makes a significant theoretical
and empirical contribution.

Acknowledgments
Google Inc. provided partial funding for this research. We also would like to thank
Matthew Feusner for data preparation and discussions.

818 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association
Notes
1 Corresponding author.
2 The authors found out that Asian subjects more likely fell into this category. This may
be due to the fact that Asians tend to have less bright pupil retro-reflection, which the
eye tracking device relies on to track eye movements (Nguyen, Wagner, Koons, &
Flickner, 2002).
3 The instruction regarding scrolling was necessary because users might mistakenly think
they could not manipulate the visual display on the computer. The instruction
regarding scrolling will unlikely affect the results of the study since searching and

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scrolling are very habitual behaviors for the subjects in this study.
4 Under the Swapped condition, the results suggested that the subjects had fewer
fixations, less regression, and checked more abstracts compared with the Normal
condition. We refrain from discussing these results since they are not statistically
significant.

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Appendix A: Eye Tracking Apparatus

The subjects’ eye movements were recorded using an ASL 504 commercial eye
tracker (Applied Science Laboratories, 2005) that utilizes a CCD camera that
employs the Pupil-Center and Corneal-Reflection method to reconstruct a subject’s
eye positions with a rate of 60Hz. A software application, GazeTracker, accompa-
nying the system was used for the simultaneous acquisition of the subject’s eye
movements (Applied Science Laboratories, 2005; Lankford, 2000). Web pages were
displayed on a 13-inch flat panel monitor with a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels.
The camera used, hereafter referred to as the pan/tilt unit, is an ASL Model 504 unit
with the Model 5000 control unit. The pan/tilt unit is a remote eye tracker placed

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association 821
underneath the flat panel display. It uses auto-focus with built-in illuminators to
produce accurate reflections. The Ascension Flock of Birds magnetic head tracker
was used in connection with the pan/tilt unit. A remote sensor, placed just above the
participant’s left eye, communicates with the sensor located on a post behind the
subject’s chair. Once calibrated, the sensor sends position information to the ASL
pan/tilt unit to provide more accurate position information should there be any
variability in a subject’s head movements. The sensor enables the participant’s eye to
remain in the center of the pan/tilt field of view. The sensor is capable of making
from 20 to 144 measurements per second and uses a pulsed DC magnetic field to

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communicate with the base unit. The tester’s computer houses the ASL and head
tracker software, while the participant’s computer stores the Web pages to be viewed
during the experiment (Lankford, 2000).

About the Authors

Bing Pan is Assistant Professor and Head of Research in the Office of Tourism
Analysis and the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management of the School
of Business and Economics at the College of Charleston. He spent two years at
Cornell University as a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Human-Computer Interaction
Lab before joining the College. His research focuses on information search behavior,
search engine marketing, online consumer behavior, and information technology use
and development in the tourism industry.
Address: Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, School of Business
and Economics, College of Charleston, 66 George Street, Charleston, SC 29424 USA
Helene Hembrooke (Ph.D.) studies the use of technology and its social applications.
Her current work focuses on using eye tracking devices as a method to investigate
people’s reactions to various aspects of websites—the visual and information density
aspects—as well as information searching behaviors and decision making in online
environments.
Address: 339 Kennedy Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850 USA
Thorsten Joachims is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at
Cornell University. His research focuses on statistical machine learning for intelligent
information access and natural language processing.
Address: Cornell University, Department of Computer Science, 4153 Upson Hall,
Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
Lori Lorigo is a Knowledge Manager in the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
College. She obtained her Ph.D. in Information Science from Cornell University
in 2006. Her research interests include information search and discovery, human-
computer interaction, knowledge management, and information evolution and
visualization.
Address: 1 South Park St. Apt. B, Hanover, NH 03755 USA

822 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association
Geri Gay is the Kenneth Bissett Professor of Communication and Information
Science at Cornell University. She is also the director of the Human Computer
Interaction Lab at Cornell. Her current research interests include social networking,
mobile computing and social interactions, collaborative computing, and interactive
design and research.
Address: 339 Kennedy Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850 USA
Laura Granka is a User Experience Researcher at Google, Inc. She studies user
behaviors in online search and uses eyetracking to build a comprehensive under-

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standing of the search experience. She received her M.S. and B.S. from Cornell
University.
Address: Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy Mountain View, CA 94043 USA

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007) 801–823 ª 2007 International Communication Association 823