My opinion piece about Google yesterday drew some skepticism.
It feels like much of it came from Googlemeisters whose deep involvement with search may be making them sensitive to every tree but barely aware of the forest.
Yesterday's piece was all opinion. Here are some facts*:
- For searches involving people looking to buy something, almost 2/3 of clicks go to paid results, not natural (organic) results.
- 85% of above-the-fold real estate in Google for high commercial intent keywords is given to paid ads. 15% goes to organic results.
- On average, the top "organic" listing gets fewer than 9% of clicks. Meanwhile, the top 3 spots get over 40% of clicks.
- If an advertiser buys keywords for which he would already rank naturally, 89% of his traffic will be generated by the paid ads, not the organic results.
- According to a recent survey, without the right hand column, over 45% of respondents could not differentiate paid ads from organic search.
* Source: The War On Free Clicks, WordStream
