Jazz Odyssey

A new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project takes a detailed look at how consumers perceive and interact with search engines.  The full report is available here, with the overall summary indicating that consumers are happy with search engine technology, but largely unaware of how they work, and there is some degree of confusion in regards to how paid placement affects the results of their searches. 

"Only 38% of users are aware of the distinction between paid or “sponsored” results and unpaid results. And only one in six say they can always tell which results are paid or sponsored and which are not. This finding is ironic, since nearly half of all users say they would stop using search engines if they thought engines were not being clear about how they presented paid results."