Users Prefer Organic Search Results to Paid Listings

According to the survey of business users and their search behavior conducted by WebAdvantage.net, members of the business community rely more heavily on organic search results than paid search listings. 85% of the respondents claim to click on sponsored links less than 40% of all searches, but nearly half of the audience (49%) does not seem to know the difference between paid and unpaid listings. Unlike the consumer audience which has been found to not drill down past the first page of search results, 92% of WebAdvantage.net survey respondents say they continue past the first pages of search results with 36 percent asserting they drill beyond the fourth page of search results.

When asked about the relevancy of search engine sponsored links and advertisements, business searchers responded that even when clicked on, paid links do not yield the best results. Seventy-eight percent of all respondents feel that they find the information that they are looking for less than 40% of the time through sponsored links, and the search engine business searches go to first is Google, which 66 percent of the respondents say they use most. The other top search engines among the business community include Yahoo (15.25%) and MSN (7.8%).

The survey, which was conducted between October 1st and 31st, polled 475 respondents and has an overall margin of error of 2.6%.