3.2.2 Commercial search engine market: Consumer behavior

A study made in the United States shows that Internet searchers are confident, satisfied and trust search engines (Fallows, D. (2005). Search engine users.) some of those results are confirmed by a Taiwanese study: (Insight Xplorer. (2006). 創市際市場研究顧問.)

• 92% are confident about their searching skills;
• 87% have a successful search experience;
• 68% believe that search engines are a fair and unbiased source of information;
• 44% of searchers say they regularly use a single search engine, 48% will use just two or three, 7% will use more than three;
• 62% are not aware of a distinction between commercial and non commercial results;

Moreover according to a study untitled: "surveying the Digital Future": (UCLA Center for Communication Policy. (2004). Surveying the Digital Future.)

How Much Of The Information On the Internet Do You Think is Reliable and Accurate?

A huge majority of them is seeing it as a reliable and accurate source of information over the time.

• According to another study 22% of Internet users have a search engine such as Google, Yahoo as their home page. This trend doubled since 2005. (Center for the Digital Future (2008). Annual Internet Survey by the Center for the Digital Future.)
• Regarding search engines reliability and accuracy 51% in 2007 are saying that most or all the information produced by search engines is reliable and accurate. They were 62% in 2006;
• Internet users find high degree of reliability and accuracy on their favorite web sites, they were 81% in 2005, 83% in 2006 and 83% in 2007; (Center for the Digital Future (2008). Annual Internet Survey by the Center for the Digital Future.)
• In 2007, 80% of Internet users are considering that most or all of the information posted by well known media such as the New York Times and CNN is reliable and accurate. They were 77% in 2006.

It seems that commercial Internet users have a positive search experience. Even if they recognize data quality issues they seem not to understand where those problems are coming from.

It should then interesting to inform them more regarding the commercial aspect of free search engines.