Explaining SERP Evaluations: The Influence of Brand Equity on the Quality Perception of Search Engine Results

• In Event: CAT Interactive Papers #3

Abstract

Even though a large number of search engines exists, most users worldwide rely on one provider: Google. From a technological perspective, Google’s dominance cannot be explained because the performance of the major search engines hardly differs. A possible explanation is the different branding of search engines. To test its influence, we investigated how the brand equity and result page evaluations are related. In an experimental online survey (N=400), college students evaluated one of four (manipulated) result pages. We confirmed our assumption that Google's brand equity is much higher than Bing's. However, the result pages were evaluated very similar. This suggest a differentiation between (a) global satisfaction with search engines and (b) satisfaction with search engine performance. Only for Google, we found that “trust” is related to the quality perception of its result page - a possible explanation for its global success.

Authors

• Svenja Schaefer, Johannes Gutenberg U

• Melanie Magin, U of Mainz

• Birgit Stark, U of Mainz