Yesterday it was reported that Yahoo has plans to topple Google as Apple’s default search engine, but according to the results of a new survey, they may have trouble convincing the searching public to trust them in the way they trust Google.
According to the survey, carried out by Search Laboratory, more than half of adults in the UK rate Google as the most trustworthy search engine, with 77% of 18-24 year olds believing that the tech giant will answer their queries the most accurately.
In fact, those questioned for the survey would trust Google to answer an enquiry more accurately and quickly than their partner or other members of their family, with more women trusting in Google’s abilities than men, despite the fact that men use the internet to search more often.
Ian Harris, founder of Search Laboratory, believes that the public need to question the fact that Google is seen as a 100% reliable source of information: “Google is seen as a kind of oracle” he says. “When people type in a question to a search engine they almost take the first result as gospel. It’s not surprising that as a nation we trust it more than our friends and family.”
Harris went on to say that Google’s reputation is strengthened by fake rumours and gossip seen circulating on Twitter and Facebook, as people believed that content on social network sites should be taken ‘with a pinch of salt’.
Google should be thrilled, not only has it become a verb (“I’ll Google it”) it’s also replaced our trust in our close friends and family’s general knowledge. Who could possibly beat that?
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