Searching the Web for conflicting topics: Page and user factors

• We studied how students navigate and bookmark Web pages in a Google’s results list.
• Students navigate the Web pages in the order suggested by the Google’s results list.
• Students bookmark Web pages for further study based on topic relevance, and to some extent on web trustworthiness.
• Students’ background knowledge is related to bookmarking trustworthy Web pages in regular Google’s results list.

Web users tend to search only the pages displayed at the top of the search engine results page (the ‘top link’ heuristic). Although it might be reasonable to use this heuristic to navigate simple and unambiguous facts, it might be risky when searching for conflicting socio-scientific topics, such as potential measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the present study, we explored the extent to which students consider other Web page characteristics, such as topic relevance and trustworthiness, when searching and bookmarking pages concerning a conflicting topic. We also examined the extent to which prior background knowledge moderates students’ behavior. The results revealed that while the study participants actually used a ‘top link’ heuristic to navigate the results, they engaged in more systematic processes to bookmark pages for further study. Furthermore, the students’ background knowledge was related to the assessment of Web page trustworthiness. We discuss these results from the perspective of a dual-processing model.