Can visible cues in search results indicate vendors' reliability?

Search engines play a critical role in the diffusion of online information because they determine what content is easily visible to Web users. Major search engines, such as Google, Microsoft Live Search, and Yahoo!, provide two distinct types of results, organic and paid, each of which uses different mechanisms for selecting and ranking relevant Web pages. Using a third-party trust assurance program from BBB (Better Business Bureau) Online we find that vendors represented by websites in organic and paid results have varying reliability ratings. These ratings, based on overall customer experiences, may range from satisfactory to unsatisfactory. We empirically examine how vendors' reliability ratings from BBB Online are associated with cues (such as type of search result, relative price of a product, and number of sites selling the product) that can be observed or derived from organic and paid search results. Further, we apply a data mining technique to predict the vendors' BBB reliability ratings using those cues and achieve good performance.

► Vendors shown in organic and paid search results have varying reliability ratings.
► We identify eight cues from organic and paid search results.
► We examine how vendors' reliability ratings from BBB Online are associated with cues.
► Using those cues we can predict vendors' BBB reliability ratings.