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)