Espotting - Article in The Times

[NFFC]

At present there are 10,000 advertisers bidding daily for 12 million keywords......Lloyds TSB has a stake in 20,000 keywords which lead to its products. Ebay has 500,000.

[timesonline.co.uk...]

[IanTurner]

Yes unfortunately my partner saw it, he now wants us to start a PPC engine ourselves!

I'll just have to tell him I can't write the code till next week. Hopefully he'll have forgotten by then.

[Shakil]

I read the article with interest, especially since I spend £5,000+ per month with them on behalf of 1 client.

The bit that has got me thinking over the last few months is the fact that more and more people are now beginning to bypass sponsored links and click on unpaid SERPS instead.

This bit of info I gained after spending 1/2 a day at clients call centre talking to callers who were making telephone enquiries.

3 people out of 18 told me they never clicked on the sponsored listings because they knew some company was just paying to be on top of results, and instead trusted the results below which are not PPC.

(in the above instance, we were not bidding PPC on the specific keywords, but were ranked Numero 1 via SEO)

makes you think, does it not??????

Shak

[heini]

>makes you think, does it not?
it does. So much for "SEO is dead"...

PPC falling could mean PFI plus SEO rising.

[mack]

In a way it makes you wonder if there is any point in aiming for no1 position. I think users now suspect that all results at the top are paid results. It would be interesting to have some data.

It would be great if google would tell us how many searches where carried out for a specific keyword, then to find out what percentage clicked on each position on the first page. My guess is no 4 would get the most traffic.

[mistah]

You're all just paranoid because you know where the "sponsered" results come from. Most people haven't got a clue how search engines work and will just click on whatever comes up top. Look at how many people use MSN because it is the default search engine.

[IanTurner]

I think you're right mistah, in the majority of consumer categories you'll probably find that the user doesn't know and in most cases doesn't care where the results come from.

Those with a more technical background will tend to be more wary of sponsored results.

[mack]

lately the search engines have come under incresing preasure to clearly mark their sponsored links. Perhaps this is puting the user at ease. who knows :)