engine - 2:24 pm on Mar 21, 2011 (gmt 0)

This is a link to a PDF white paper from Microsoft Research

Augmenting Web Pages and Search Results to Support Credibility Assessment [research.microsoft.com]

ABSTRACT The presence (and, sometimes, prominence) of incorrect and misleading content on the Web can have serious conse-quences for people who increasingly rely on the internet as their information source for topics such as health, politics, and financial advice. In this paper, we identify and collect several page features (such as popularity among specialized user groups) that are currently difficult or impossible for end-users to assess, yet provide valuable signals regarding credibility. We then present visualizations designed to augment search results and Web pages with the most prom-ising of these features. Our lab evaluation finds that our augmented search results are particularly effective at in-creasing the accuracy of users’ credibility assessments, highlighting the potential of data aggregation and simple interventions to help people make more informed decisions as they search for information online.