Most UK web users do not understand the workings of internet search engines, new research has revealed.
According to web hosting company FastHosts, 19 per cent of consumers "have no idea" how search results are compiled, while five per cent said they think they are arranged randomly.
Nearly a quarter of those polled said they did not think that search listings are determined by the website publishers - which of course they are, partly through search engine optimisation.
Meanwhile, 22 per cent claimed they suspected that search engine results are ordered accordingly to how much a website's publisher has paid for it.
With regards to "sponsored listings", for example those which appear at the top of the search page, web users said they find them "less worthy" than organic results.
Writing on the official Guardian technology blog, Jack Schofield commented: "If I ran a search engine, I'd be looking for ways to make it clearer that organic results, unlike sponsored links, are not paid for."
Despite this, paid search recently topped a list of strategies used for viral internet advertising, Marketing Sherpa revealed.
On a scale of one to five, where one was "terrible" and five was "great", 63 per cent of internet marketers polled rated paid search at three.
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