Positive Emotions During Search Engine Use: How You Feel Impacts What You Search for and Click On.

The article investigates how positive incidental emotion—emotion unrelated to the search task—affects consumers’ online search behavior and paid search ad click-through rates (CTRs). It finds that positive incidental emotion primes consumers to use positive emotion keywords (e.g., “happy,” “joyful”) in their search queries, which reduces their use of persuasion knowledge (awareness of marketers’ persuasive intent) when evaluating paid search ads, thereby increasing the likelihood of clicking on these ads. Supported by six experimental studies and archival search engine data, the research highlights that positive emotion keywords lead to higher paid ad CTRs compared to nonemotion keywords, an effect specific to paid ads and not organic search results. The findings suggest practical implications for advertisers to incorporate positive emotion keywords into keyword targeting strategies, especially for hedonic product categories, and consider timing bids during periods with higher incidence of positive emotion searches, such as weekends and holidays.