Paid vs. organic statistics

I found it kinda interesting the other day when I stumbled over some stats regarding which area of the search engine search results drive the most traffic. If I remember right, it was 70% organic vs. 30% paid. This made sense to me because my clicking habits are similar. I look at the organic search results first by default and if I don’t see what I want right away I’ll scan the paid or “sponsored listings”. I would agree that about 70% of the time I find what I need in the organic results. I’m posting this just to point out that you shouldn’t JUST focus on pay-per-click advertising campaigns. This type of marketing has great value but don’t underestimate the value of good, old fashioned organic placement.

On a related topic, I just uncovered some stats from Pew Internet that state some 62% of internet users don’t even realize the difference between paid and organic search results! I found this to be incredibly surprising since sites like Google clearly mark listings as “sponsored links”.

On a side note, I also found it really interesting when you search for “sponsored links” on Google, who shows up as the first paid “sponsored link”? One of Google’s top competitors.

Anyway, just a few little tidbits of information for you to chew on. Have a great week and don’t forget to consider SMG for your search engine marketing firm!