Do you trust what you search for?

Posted by Ken

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People who trust search engines tend to search less often, are more likely to use a single engine, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, feel they are more successful than frequent searchers, according to the survey. This suggests that as people gain experience with search engines, they also develop critical thinking skills that can help them avoid low quality or deceptive information.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project

You might be asking yourself, “So what do search engines have to do with Internet safety?” Well, it may be a little more subtle than other high-profile topics discussed here, but it’s important for everyone to develop critical thinking skills when searching for and using the information they find online.

Still not convinced? Then consider the person who is looking up health or financial information. Finding bad advice for either one could lead to bad results.

If you’re like me, you use just one search engine when looking for information you need. For me, that engine is Google. I like it because it has a clean interface, it’s fast, and I like the way the guys at Google think. They’re always pushing the envelope with something that their competitors were slow to move on.

But there is something to be said about what the other engines have to offer you, if for no other reason than to keep you from getting into a rut. And who knows? It’s possible they could come up with that one thing you were looking for at Google and had given up on.

Now, I’m not trying to push one search engine over another. Every one of them has a way of suiting the tastes of its audience. Another study performed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows us that when searchers do frequent simple searches, they develop a sense of confidence in their searching abilities. In turn, this causes searchers to trust the search engines as realiable resources.

But did you know about search results that pay to get into the results? I’m not talking about the “sponsored links” you see off to the top or side of the results. I mean actually in the list of results that are supposedly free. Personally, I’m against paid inclusion because a search engine should be based on factors outside of money like how popular a site in question is or the actual content the search engine finds on that site.

I’m more likely to be influenced by a someone who knows what they’re talking about than someone who is paid to promote something. That’s more genuine to me. I carry that value system over to the search engines.

Consider for a moment what your child might be searching for. Sometimes an innocent topic can bring up unexpected results. The major search engines will offer you a way to restrict the results in some fashion. For example, when clicking on the “Advanced Search” link at Google (really, I’m not pushing them, I just use them a lot), you can modify the number of results you get, and select the strength of filter it uses before showing the results. So not only can you protect you and your family from unsavor results, you can make them more productive as well.

So the next time you go online in search of information think about the following:

Try another search site (Yahoo, Google, MSN, AskJeeves, etc.)
Whatever search engine you use, check out their advanced features to see if they offer filtering
Try searching on more than one keyword to help you narrow your search
Take a moment to check the information you find with other search results