Choice overload in search engine use

Search engines typically return so many results that choosing from the list might be predicted to suffer from the effects of "choice overload". Preliminary work has reported just such an effect [12]. In this paper a series of three experiments was conducted to investigate the choice overload effect in search engine use. Participants were given search tasks and presented with either six or twenty-four returns to choose from. The results revealed that the choice behaviour was strongly influenced by the ranking of returns, and that choice satisfaction was affected by the number of options and the decision time. The main results, from the third experiment, showed that large sets of options yielded a positive effect on participants' satisfaction when they made a decision without time limit. When time was more strongly constrained, choices from small sets led to relatively higher satisfaction. Our studies show how user satisfaction with found information can be affected by processing strategies that are influenced by search engine design features.