Credibility assessment of good abandonment results in mobile search

Abstract

Search engine optimization allows for users’ needs to be directly met by result snippets or a “knowledge map” without clicking any results. This behavior is called “good abandonment” and is found to frequently occur during mobile searching. Users exhibit such a behavior when they trust the result that addresses their information need without bothering to click it. Therefore, this study examines how users judge a result's credibility without clicking. This study proposes a model for assessing the credibility of good abandonment results, making a hypothesis about the measures that may affect credibility assessments in mobile searches. A credibility assessment experiment was conducted to collect users’ eye movements, perceived credibility and feedback on different credibility measures. Users’ search behaviors were recorded by a screen recorder, in order to see whether a search was good abandonment. Then the initially proposed model was validated in terms of users’ perceived credibility, search behaviors and feedback, and further improved. The revised model found that the credibility assessment of good abandonment results in mobile searching is determined by six credibility measures distributed across three aspects of content, operator and design. Content-related measures show that users tend to believe the results if there is detailed and updated context information and the content is neutral. Operator-related measures indicate the impact of trust in the search engine on the credibility assessment. Design-related measures indicate that users tend to trust results with interactive functions and optimal layouts. How each of the six measures influence users’ assessment of credibility is discussed in this paper.