Search Engine News from Piedmont Design

This article: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2006/sep/18prt.html is inherently biased because it’s written by a guy selling SEO services rather than by a site trying to inform you (does that mean this blog is “inherently biased?) but his stats in particular are interesting:

Study after study indicates people are less likely to clíck on paid search ads rather than on results from organic search engine optimization. For example, one study found that search users are up tö six times more likely to clíck on the first few organic results than they are to choose any of the paid results [1], while an eye tracking study [2] showed that 50 percent of users begin their search by scanning the top organic results. Other studies have shown that only 30 percent of search engine users clíck on paid listings, leaving an overwhelming 70 percent who are clicking the organic listings. [3] And a 2003 study found that 85 percent of searchers report clicking on paid links in less than 40 percent of all of their searches, and 78 percent of all respondents claim that they found the information they were searching for through sponsored links just 40 percent of the time.[4]