As seasoned Internet veterans know, just because a site shows up high on Google's search rankings doesn't mean it's the most credible source on a topic. That little bit of wisdom has apparently not made it all the way down to the current generation of college students, however, according to a paper published in the International Journal of Communication. According to the research out of Northwestern University, students barely care about who or what is showing up when they click on that top link—a behavior that undoubtedly affects their quality of research when doing schoolwork.

The researchers observed 102 college freshmen performing searches on a computer for specific information—usually with Google, but also making use of Yahoo, SparkNotes, MapQuest, Microsoft (we assume this means Bing), Wikipedia, AOL, and Facebook. Most students clicked on the first search result no matter what it was, and more than a quarter of respondents said explicitly that they chose it because it was the first result. "In some cases, the respondent regarded the search engine as the relevant entity for which to evaluate trustworthiness, rather than the Web site that contained the information," wrote researchers Eszter Hargittai, Lindsay Fullerton, Ericka Menchen-Trevino, and Kristin Yates Thomas.

Only 10 percent of the participants mentioned the author or author's credentials when performing their research, and according to screen captures of those students, "none actually followed through by verifying either the identification or the qualifications of the authors." The researchers said this was the case even when the student stated directly that he or she should check to see who the authors were and what their qualifications were.

Students did acknowledge that certain websites—mostly those ending in .gov, .edu—were more credible than others because they weren't written by "just anybody." However, some felt the same way about .org sites, and were unaware that .org domains could be sold to anyone (and therefore have about the same credibility as any .com out there).

Still, the takeaway is that a large majority of students give more weight to the search tool they're using than the sites they're finding via those searches. The paper quoted numerous students professing their particular love for Google, or talking about how Microsoft's search services are credible because Microsoft is a "more professional" company—basically, search engine brands meant a lot to the students using them, and those students seem to place credibility on the automated search rankings provided by those services.

The suggested solution to this problem seems simple enough: educators should tell students how and why certain websites should be considered credible in class. As Hargittai points out, sometimes you just need to state the obvious. "Just because younger people grew up with the Web doesn't mean they're universally savvy with it," she said.

International Journal of Communication, 2010. DOI: DOI unavailable.