Examining the Ability of Users in the Croatian Market to Distinguish Organic and Sponsored Search Results

Search engines generate most of their income through sponsored (paid) search results that appear as answers to user queries. Due to the goal of increasing profits, search engines try to reduce the ability of users to distinguish between sponsored and organic (unpaid) results. This is primarily visible in the design and structure of sponsored search results in the form of ads, which appear very similar to organic results. Although there are studies on other markets, on the Croatian market is insufficiently covered by existing research. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate how much are users in the Croatian market aware of the difference between sponsored and organic search results, and how this knowledge influences their behavior based on search results.