What does online Trust have to do with online Relevance? Well, to some degree, the more trust we have of the relevance of the search engine results listings, the more likely users will be inclined to use a certain search engine. Trust has to be earned in many ways though, with Open, Honest, Upfront, and Good (O'HUG) communication that withstands the test of time.
Consumer Reports WebWatch's latest press release on their upcoming conference entitled "Trust or Consequence: The Web's Reputation at Risk" says "The survey of 1,500 U.S. adult Internet users over 18 looks at consumer attitudes towards Web site trustworthiness and consumer understanding of privacy, security, transparency and the separation of editorial content from advertising." The U.S. Newswire header reads "Consumers Trust Web Sites Less Than Ever, Consumer Reports Webwatch Finds". Is Consumer Reports WebWatch a victim of what Henry David Thoreau once said: "We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect?"
I don't think they are, but if only we could all follow William Shakespeare's quote from "All's Well That Ends Well" which says "Love all, trust a few; Do wrong to none". But, sadly, the "do wrong to none" is not happening. The "Payments News" blog recently talked about "New Papers: Identity Theft Definitions, Federal Consumer Protection Regulation". These new Federal Reserve Bank papers talk about "definitions" and "disclosures". These words relate to O'HUG communication, and can also be applied to search engines. Google still doesn't have a link from "Sponsored Links" to a definition of it. Yahoo still does not disclose to the public which of its listings in the organic/natural search results are "paid inclusion" listings.
A June 21, 2005 c/net article entitled "Trust Thy Internet Neighbor" speaks more toward the interpersonal relationship trust challenge, but a quote from Caterina Fake (V.P. Mktg at Flikr) can be applied to the online search issue too: "Going forward, trust (will be) the thing that makes the Internet possible. Reputation management will be more and more important." With more and more people becoming online search users, and more frequent users, all the time as broadband usage expands, there will be many more "first impressions" of the online search and web site usage experience.
Let's hope that the search engines don't adopt the disclaimers that McDonald's has about "Unsolicited Ideas" or Burger King has about "Marketing Ideas" (10/23/06 Update - Burger King has made that disclaimer less conspicuous, but appears to be encouraging customer food/service satisfisfaction feedback). These links came from a recent article entitled "Attention? I Don't Want Your Freakin Attention!". What irony it would be if the search engine leaders of the internet search world evolved into clones of the large corporate publishing entities that they help bring to their knees. Then it would be their turn to read the "bumper sticker" of the "Cluetrain Manifesto".
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