Understand and leverage the cognitive biases that influence user behaviour

Garrett says: “Understand the role of cognitive biases in SEO. Our brains play a lot of tricks on us. When people are searching for things, we can be deceived by the shortcuts that our brains take. These cognitive biases influence the type of information that we’re seeking, and SEOs need to pay attention to them.

We all bring context into our searches: how our day’s going, our jobs, what we like, our families, etc. That influences the type of information that we’re looking for. There are hundreds of cognitive biases, and they influence the way that we search, the queries we put in, the results that we see from Google, and the results that we ultimately choose.

When it comes to search content strategy, confirmation bias is an important example. As it turns out, when we’re searching, we’re often trying to find information that confirms our existing beliefs. It may not be the right information, but it’s information that we want to know. We don’t want to have our minds changed, so we actually search that way – and your audience does too.

Another example is familiarity bias. We are much more comfortable with what we are familiar with. That plays a large role in brand recognition. We know that brand can holistically influence what we search for. We’re more likely to click on a result from a brand that we recognise.

A third example is authority bias, where we believe authorities or experts in the field. If you see an educational site, you might trust it more because it’s academic, or you might trust a hospital site for health queries.

All of these different types of biases can influence the way that we search. As SEOs, we can make sure that our content and SEO strategy is influenced by what our audiences are searching for.”

How would you describe what a cognitive bias is?

“It’s the way that we think; the way that we logically come to conclusions and the way that we search for information. It’s how we use our brain and all these heuristics – these little mental shortcut tricks that we use to make everything easier. The truth is it takes a lot of brain power to think. As humans, we are kind of lazy, so we use those shortcuts.

Daniel Kahneman wrote a book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, in which he outlines the idea that there are two systems through which our brains operate. One system is intuitive, emotion-based thinking, and then the other system is much more complex. If you’re driving down the road and having a conversation with a friend, you can do all these things at once.

However, if a car comes into your lane and you have to swerve, then you’re not going to be talking to your friend anymore. That’s where your second system, the more complex system, comes into play. For the most part, we depend on the first system thinking. Cognitive biases are when those little shortcuts go wrong.”

How does Google deliver results that support these biased searches?

“There have been a lot of studies about this, including a famous one from 2015 by Varol Onur Kayhan.

Imagine that you’re looking for information about the health benefits of coffee and you want to prove that coffee is healthy for you. You ask, ‘Is coffee healthy for you?’, and you get a set of results. If you came from the other direction and asked, ‘Is coffee unhealthy for you?’, you’d actually get a different set of search results.

There are studies which prove that aspects of coffee are healthy and other studies which prove that aspects of coffee are unhealthy. So, based on the biased nature of the search (trying to prove whether it’s healthy versus unhealthy), Google will produce completely different search results.

There might be some overlap, but you can start to see how the confirmation bias of what you’re looking to prove will influence the way that you phrase your query.”

To counteract the impact of confirmation bias, should Google offer alternate viewpoints on the same search?

“It’s a great question. At the heart of it is whether or not Google is editorial in nature.

A fact and an opinion are vastly different. I was having this conversation with Jack Chambers-Ward on the Candour podcast last year, when Google was rolling out the Perspectives filter. It made us wonder how you decide which perspective is the most valuable. Are you showing two sides of the same coin for a conspiracy theory?

Deciding what opinion is the most valid, or the most valuable, becomes a really complex topic for Google. How do you choose one perspective as being more important and valuable than another, when you’re ranking opinions? That’s essentially what you’re doing with search results.

It’s problematic either way because whatever Google chooses to do is editorial. Even People Also Ask is going to be biased. If I put in a brand name, you’re going to see a bunch of other questions that come up based on what other people are searching for.

If you ask a question about Nike, you might see People Also Ask questions about whether Nike produces great shoes or is great for athletes, but you might also see questions about whether they still make clothes in sweatshops in Asia. There’s a bias there. For brands, that bias can go in both directions.

Whether or not Google decides to show that in the results, if it benefits the brand or it doesn’t, is problematic. What responsibility do they have to surface these types of other perspectives? I don’t think anyone has the right answer for that.”

Is familiarity bias essentially when a user is more likely to click on a brand they recognise than one they don’t?

“Yes, and it plays across lots of different industries. In the media, you have your go-to news source. If you’re looking for a news topic in search and you see the same types of headlines from different news sources, you’re more likely to click on the news source that you’re familiar with.

Going back to that confirmation bias, maybe you’re more likely to click on the brand that’s going to have an opinion or perspective that aligns with your political leanings, for instance.

Familiarity bias plays a big role, in terms of how often you see these different brands – whether it’s because they advertise more or because you choose to engage with those brands in your everyday life.

It’s important from an SEO perspective because you can get a higher click-through rate for generic terms if users recognise your brand.

It’s also relevant with the AI overviews. People are wondering whether they should try to appear in AI overviews just for the impression and visibility, even if people aren’t clicking on the links. That’s an aspect of brand familiarity that would benefit you. Even if people aren’t clicking, seeing your name in that AI overview generative output is a value add for your brand.”

How do we position our brands to be authorities within our niche, so that we can cater to a user’s authority bias?

“There are a few ways to do that. One way is through EEAT and using actual experts with credentials on your author pages. I’m not just talking about how that will improve your rankings but also showing your users that experts are writing the content on your site.

The other way is through links and getting authoritative links from other complimentary organisations within your industry. That can show you as an authority.

Social proof is also a big thing: having well-known recognised brands use your product or service, or associate with you in other ways – or showing up in well-known media publications in your industry. All of those different factors can make you look more authoritative, and ultimately benefit your brand from an SEO perspective as well.”

How do you establish the likely cognitive biases of your audience, and leverage those for your brand?

“There are a lot of ways that you can do that. The core thing is understanding your audience by interviewing them, whether that’s your existing customers or the general market. You can do this through different surveys or one-to-one interviews, asking them pointed questions about both your product and their general affinities.

Ask what their interests are, ask more about them, ask their opinions on different related topics, and then incorporate those opinions into your content.

I recently saw an example of this related to electric vehicles. There are a lot of strong opinions about whether they’re safe or not. When searching for, ‘Are electric vehicles safe?’, a lot of the results were government studies and different media publications, but I was surprised to see one page from Kia – an actual manufacturer.

It made me think that this brand is more likely to have people purchase their electric vehicle because they’re the only one showing up for this key confirmation bias question that their audience might be asking.”

How do you decide on the most important questions to answer?

“That’s really tough. It depends on your brand and where you’re focusing on in the buyer’s journey. You want to start at the bottom of the funnel, with whatever is closest to revenue.

Try to understand what they are biased toward and why they’re making a decision between your brand and a competitor. Build out that content and address those objections, interests, or biases there. Then work your way outwards.

Ultimately, marketing is all about getting people to become customers. Depending on how many resources you have, start with what’s going to make money and then work outwards.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2025?

“Stop wasting your time trying to do link building for low-quality links that have nothing to do with your site, your industry, or the value that your company brings. People still have some really outdated thoughts around quantity of links. In 2025, that’s a waste of time.

Don’t get me wrong, I think link building is still important. It’s valuable to have it be an ongoing process, where you’re getting valuable quality links from your industry. Just don’t do it at scale for any type of link that isn’t authoritatively relevant to your content. Don’t waste time on that type of link building.

Just getting a link willy-nilly doesn’t have the same value as a high authority link that’s relevant to your topic.”

Garrett Sussman is Director of Marketing at iPullRank, and you can find him over at iPullRank.com.