Completed in March, the "iProspect Search Engine User Attitudes
Survey" was developed through a partnership among iProspect,
WebSurveyor, Strategem Research, and Survey Sampling International
and took the views of 1,649 respondents.
The survey found that across the top four search engines -
Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL, which hold over 90% of the market
share - more than 60% of users chose a natural search result over a
paid search advertisement as most relevant to a sample query.
"This illustrates that even though on-line marketers focus the
majority of their energy and budget on paid search advertising,
natural search results are at least equally if not more important
to reaching their entire searching audience," said Fredrick
Marckini, CEO of search engine marketing firm iProspect.
"Marketers who are not investing in natural search engine
optimisation and paid inclusion programs such as Yahoo!'s Site
Match Xchange program are missing a large percentage of potential
traffic. However, the same is true for the reverse: marketers who
are only investing in natural optimisation and paid inclusion miss
nearly 40% of search engine users. The clear finding here is that
smart marketers must invest in both," Marckini added.
But MSN is different...
The survey found that MSN users are far more likely to click on
a paid search ad than users of Google, Yahoo! and AOL.
More than 60% of Yahoo! users and over 72% of Google users
clicked on a natural search result when looking for the most
relevant listing for their query; yet over 71% of MSN users
identified a paid search advertisement listing as being the most
qualified result returned for their query.
"This could be attributed to how pay per click (PPC) ads are
identified within MSN's returned results," said Marckini. "Users
who may shy away from paid search listings when they see them may
have difficulty distinguishing between the two types of results.
Despite this potential case of mistaken identity, the survey shows
it is important to have a strong paid search advertisement presence
in this specific search engine".
The survey also shows that users who listed AOL as their search
engine of choice were evenly split on a preference for natural
search results or paid advertisements as the best result to answer
their query.
Reasons for this split could range from the balance AOL employs
between algorithms ranking organic search results and human-edited
paid search advertisements, to paid advertisements being more
clearly identified as such on AOL than on some engines.
Nonetheless, said iProspect, this result shows that on-line
marketers who focus solely on one type of result will miss 50% of
potential interest and traffic from Internet users. Focus within
this search engine needs to be divided equally between the two
types to have optimal results.
User bias
The survey found that gender, employment status, education level
and internet savvy all played a part in determining whether a user
would click on a paid or natural search result. In general, the
more educated and more internet-experienced the user, the less
likely he or she was to choose the paid search option.
Again looking at the four largest search engines, iProspect
found that 43% of female respondents chose a paid search
advertisement as the most relevant result to a sample query,
compared to just under 35% of men, while almost 65% of
fully-employed respondents would choose the natural search result
as compared to 61% of part-timers and 55% of unemployed users.
"Our sense is that there is a correlation between education
level, frequency of internet use and years of internet experience
that indicates that the more savvy the internet user, the more
likely they are able to differentiate between a paid search
advertisement and a natural search result," said Marckini.
"As a result, that percentage of the population who avoid
advertising in general may be reluctant to click on paid search
advertisements in greater numbers, regardless of their feeling
about the ad's relevance," he added.
Visibility
The question of whether a listing is found in the natural or
paid search results is irrelevant if it is not found within the
first three pages of results, according the survey.
Researchers found that almost 82% of search engine users will
abandon their search after viewing the first three pages of results
returned. Twenty-two percent of users stop looking after viewing
the first few results, while a further 19% stop after looking at
the first page.
Homemakers, at 52%, were most likely to abandon the search after
just one page, while students, at 27%, were most likely to continue
with the search.
"These findings suggest that for sites that market to
homemakers, such as Tupperware, Betty Crocker and Homemaker.com,
failing to appear on the first page of returned results means
missing out on over 50% of potential customers," Marckini
reasoned.
Age, employment and gender were also found to be factors in
abandonment - with older users, unemployed users and women more
likely to abandon their searches after just one page.
Loyalty
The survey also considered the question of search engine loyalty
and found that 57% of internet users use the same search engine or
directory when they are looking for information, and just over 30%
of web users have a few specific search engines they use
regularly.
A small proportion of web users – under 13% - said they use a
different search engine each time, depending on what they are
looking for at that moment.
In addition, the survey results revealed that specific search
engines have more loyal users than others. Looking at the loyalty
rate within the top search properties, according to market share,
Google has a loyalty rate of 65.8%, Yahoo! has a loyalty rate of
55.2%, MSN has a loyalty rate of 53.7% and AOL nets 48.6% loyalty
from its users.
Additionally, iProspect found that 92% of respondents would
modify and re-launch their search using the same search engine
after being dissatisfied with the first three pages of results
returned by their initial search.
See: iProspect's
Search Engine User Attitudes Survey (28-page pdf)
