Consumers are often confronted with product lineups, where they try to visually identify a previously encountered product in a sequence of similar items. In such cases, what determines their success at correctly identifying the target product? The current research finds that the longer consumers search, the more conservative judges they become, and – ironically – the more likely they are to erroneously reject the correct target when it finally appears in the lineup. We propose this happens because each time consumers examine a similar item in the sequence, and determine that it is not the option for which they have been looking, they draw an implicit metacognitive inference that the correct target should feel more familiar than the similar items rejected up to that point altogether. This causes the subjective degree of “rightness” consumers expect to experience with the true target to progressively escalate, making them more conservative but less accurate judges. The findings have practical implications for consumers and marketers, and make theoretical contributions to work on metacognitive inferences, recognition, and product search.