What impact has Adwords had on natural search results CTR

is life at the top not quite the same anymore?

[ScottD]

Now that Adwords are featuring in up to 3 lines on the top of the results page, and are all down the side of the page, is the click through rate falling for the top spots in natural search listings?

Does anyone have any conclusive evidence on this? Would anyone care to speculate?

Perhaps someone out there has held the top spot for the last few years, but has seen their traffic falling with the introduction of Adwords?

[wanna_learn]

I dont see any major change in CTR

[SuddenlySara]

I've been trying to figure out why all my natural keyword listings in Google convert so well compared to my adword listings. No drops in conversions from pre-adwords either. Maybe Google's search bot is a much better ad writer than me? But nope Adwords does not affect my SE listing convertions at all.

[SuddenlySara]

Forgot to say that I don't see a drop in click throughs on top natural listings on keywords that have been there long before Adwords. The SE keeps growing with more listings and surfers and so do my click throughs because of that as far as I know.

[ScottD]

Its certainly a good point SS that in a world of growing surfer numbers, the potential loss of clicks presented by Adwords would be offset quite a bit.

What would happen if Google surfer numbers were falling? Webmasters might get a bit more upset about the competition perceived by Adwords then.

I can imagine as you say the conversion is still better from natural listings. Hopefully users can distinguish an advert from a natural listing, and trust more in the site that has "earned" its place.