“Only 1 in 6 users of Internet search engines can tell the difference between unbiased search results and paid advertisements, a new survey finds.“  Full Article >>

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has released a study on searching behavior this week, and it’s getting quite a bit of play in the web development community.

The take-away, as I understand it, is that people tend to believe they are pretty good Internet searchers, while in truth they’re not really understanding what the results are.

On one hand, I guess for business this means you can truly “pay to play” on Google by buying AdWords, as searchers won’t know that your paid placement isn’t a “true” search result.

On the other hand, once people figure out what’s going on, they might not like you anymore…;)

Overall this study seems to once again prove that what people say/think, and what they do are often different—so as web developers we need to move past asking simple questions about what people do on the internet, or what they like about a certain website.  We need to actually watch them.