Great to see this very interesting research from such a respected researcher on web communication and web use as Eszter Hargittai.The Headline Comes from a Northwestern University Announcement:Google it. That’s what many college students do when asked to read an excerpt of a play for class, write a resume or find the e-mail address of a politician.They trust Google so much that a Northwestern University study has found many students only click on websites that turn up at the top of Google searches to complete assigned tasks. If they don’t use Google, researchers found that students trust other brand-name search engines and brand-name websites to lead them to information.The study was published by the International Journal of Communication. (Abstract and Full Text)[Our Emphasis] “Many students think, ‘Google placed it number one, so, of course it’s credible,’” said Eszter Hargittai, associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern. “This is potentially tricky because Google doesn’t rank a site by its credibility.”What we also find interesting is that the students who participated in the study have grown up in, for lack of a better expression, Google world. Yet they have no idea about how it and other web search tools work. A great example for the importance of information literacy. Five or six years ago people said to us that a significant portion of the “lack of understanding” about web search would go away as users, especially younger ones, would get more familiar and comfortable with the technology. Well, it appears that it hasn’t. Btw, the phrase “how they work” doesn’t mean an in-depth, several semester class about info retrieval, info seeking behavior, and other concepts. …

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