January 22, 2009 by Matt Thomas
Well, not just Google, search engines in general actually. That’s according to a survey from FastHosts aimed at determining our level of knowledge when it comes to search engines. The survey was given to around 1600 British adults and uncovered some amazing misconceptions.
Not just misconceptions, completely contradictory misconceptions. For instance, 24 percent believe that a website’s position in the listings cannot be influenced by the people running that website, whilst 22 percent believe that position is entirely down to how much money that site has paid. For the record 19 percent have no idea and one in twenty believe it’s completely random.
All in all, only about 1 in 3 of us has a reasonable idea of how search listings are compiled though there is a gender gap of 7 percent between the 33 percent of men that get it and the 26 percent of women that understand.
Does this matter? Probably not too much, search engines are set up to be easy to use for consumers therefore it shouldn’t be necessary to be SEO trained to use one. However, the amount of people who believe the top organic search result has bought its way there is a little troubling, not to mention frustrating for the SEOs behind getting that position.
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