In accordance with the topic of the Information Cascade, a recent study was published which analyzed how likely college level students are to click a link from a Google search based on the abstract relevance and its position on the page (see http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue3/pan.html).

The results of the study indicate that college students are influenced both by the order in which the links are presented on Google and by the relevance of the abstract that is presented with it. However, when compared, it seems that the position of the link on the webpage is much more influential on the students’ decision as opposed to the relevance of the abstract.

These findings are characteristic of an Information Cascade. In this scenario, the searcher is given two pieces of information. First, they are given the rank of the link on the webpage. In other words, they have the first link, which is most relevant according to Google, then the second which is second in relevance, and so on. And second, they are given the abstract which provides them with direct insight as to the content of the link that they are about to click. The abstract, as we all know, provides the words we search for in bold along with a few words or a sentence that accompany it on either side.

Intuitively, we should think that by reading the abstract, we give ourselves our best personal insight as to what we think is contained within the webpage. This can be considered our own ‘research’ as to what we are likely to find. But we can also consider the rank on the page as our trust in what is suggested by Google. This is the cascade factor that sometimes changes our decision from what we would previously feel is right.

In the findings of the study, it is found that students are more likely to click on a webpage based on its rank, more concisely, the suggestion that Google makes as to its relevance to our query. Even if the results of webpage are scrambled and more relevant abstracts are found at the bottom of the page, students are inclined to pick the link that is closest to the top. This strongly suggests that we follow the outside suggestions instead of our own intuition in accordance with an Information Cascade.

In short, we must ask ourselves - do we trust machines and their computing algorithms too much? Should we in the future depend on ourselves more to make a better-educated decision as to what we should choose in our sources of information? Perhaps these thoughts will run through our minds the next time we do some research on the internet.

see: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue3/pan.html