People have a high level of trust in search engines, especially Google, but only limited knowledge of them, as numerous studies have shown. This leads to the question: To what extent is this trust justified considering the lack of familiarity among users with how search engines work and the business models they are founded on? We assume that trust in Google, search engine preferences and knowledge of result types are interrelated. To examine this assumption, we conducted a representative online survey with n = 2012 German Internet users. We show that users with little search engine knowledge are more likely to trust and use Google than users with more knowledge. A contradiction revealed itself – users strongly trust Google, yet they are unable to adequately evaluate search results. For those users, this may be problematic since it can potentially affect knowledge acquisition. Consequently, there is a need to promote user information literacy to create a more solid foundation for user trust in search engines. The impact of our study lies in emphasising the need for creating appropriate training formats to promote information literacy.

人们对搜索引擎，尤其是Google有着高度的信任，但正如许多研究表明的那样，人们对它们的了解有限。这就引出了一个问题：考虑到用户之间对搜索引擎的工作方式和所基于的商业模式缺乏了解，这种信任在多大程度上是合理的？我们假设对Google的信任，搜索引擎的偏好和结果类型的知识是相互关联的。为了检验这一假设，我们对n = 2012年德国互联网用户。我们显示，搜索引擎知识很少的用户比知识更多的用户更可能信任和使用Google。矛盾暴露了出来–用户强烈信任Google，但他们无法充分评估搜索结果。对于那些用户来说，这可能是有问题的，因为它可能会影响知识的获取。因此，需要提高用户的信息素养，以为用户对搜索引擎的信任建立更坚实的基础。我们研究的影响在于强调需要创建适当的培训格式来提高信息素养。