The patience of people using Google searches to learn more about finance is being sorely tested, according to research conducted by finance website WalletHub.

The company “evaluated popular credit card and banking terms searched by consumers to see if Google is really returning the best results”.

It also conducted a nationally-representative survey to see how consumers felt about Google searches.

“Lots of consumers start their research for the best financial products on Google, which makes the quality of Google’s results extremely important to people’s financial wellbeing,” WalletHub said.

A ChannelNews search on “best credit cards”.

Only four in 10 Google searches (41%) in the study met the needs of the user’s intended query.

The testing found that in more than a third of searches (34%) the only results shown in the top 10 were from advertisers.

It found 58% of the relevant search results that only display advertiser products “are not transparent about doing so”.

“We assessed whether the top results are sufficiently transparent with consumers about their advertiser status. If they disclosed this in the top part of the page, in a font that is not considered fine print, and avoided using vague language (such as “may receive compensation”) when showing only advertiser products, they were considered to be transparent.”

The survey found that:

  • 84% of people would prefer better results from less well-known brands over worse results from more well-known brands;
  • 71% of people wish Google had more competition;
  • 65% of people think there are “too many” or “way too many” ads on Google search results pages;
  • 71% of people think Google unfairly favours its own products and services in search results;
  • 84% of people wish there were more independent websites in Google’s search results;
  • 75% of people think Google has a bias toward big brands;
  • 87% of people expect Google to show the best result first;
  • 66% of people think Google shows too many ads, while 32% think it shows too many irrelevant results, and;
  • 63% of people think that Google search results were better last year.