Bhautik Sheth Dr. Ravi Vaidya
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Corresponding Author:
Along with organic and ad results on search engines, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) results has changed the way users evaluate results’ credibility, its relevance and trustworthiness. The traditional search engine ecosystem, which has been dominated by organic and paid results. is now also showing AI-generated results. The different forms of results (organic, ads and AI-generated) give users options to collect the information for their search queries. This scoping review integrates fifty peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2025 to understand and examine the evolving user trust, preference and behaviour within these hybrid search engine result environments. Following Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) scoping framework, the scoping review systematically studies cognitive, ethical, and socio-cultural parameters that influence users’ trust. The findings suggest three patterns: first, confidence in organic results is because of perceived neutrality. Second, occasional clicks on paid search results depend on brand awareness and understanding of the sponsored results. Third, emergent over-trust in AI-generated results is the reason for linguistic fluency and automation bias. Based on this integration, the paper presents a model that combines cognitive heuristics and ethics as key factors that influence user trust. This framework clears the understanding of trust for algorithm-influenced results, sponsored results and dynamic human-AI interaction. The review concludes with research gaps suggesting the need for longitudinal and design-based studies. This will help us identify how users decide between organic, paid and AI-generated results.
