Marcia - 9:52 am on Jun 18, 2007 (gmt 0)

I believe it's been statistically shown that the organic listings have a higher CTR than Ad listings. So my guess is that if they were to de-commercialize the organic results, many of the people using the engine to do commercial or shopping searches would stop using it. That would have a net result eventually of reducing the clicks on Adwords, since shoppers wouldn't find regular search attractive any more, they'd likely go to another search engine that does have stores to shop at.

If you need socks, are you interested in reading about the history of cotton and how it's harvested and processed, or do you want to buy socks? And are you going to go to a search engine to find socks in ADS only or in search too. Or will you be willing to drill down to the 3rd or 4th page to find organic listings for stores to buy socks at?