Organic to Paid click ratio

[grandpa]

Has there been any research done to show where a user would be more inclined to click a link or an ad? It could be interesting reading. The reason I ask is that I check my referrals (click back from whence the user arrived) and in many cases I might find my site above the fold in the organic results, and may well also have a position up north or near the top of the ad listings. Which one is the average user more likely to click?

The answer to that would certainly be relevant to advertising strategies, and budgets. I'll have to research my own logs now that I've asked...

[briggidere]

it really depends on which industry you are in.
one of my sites ranks #2 for a certain search term and we do ppc on this terms as well. we are usually about 2-4 in the ppc ranks. from the hitwise stats we get the 2nd most traffic for this term with a ppc only site getting the most.
the site targets the over 65's range. they may be less familiar with the ppc stuff and recognising that it is a paid listing so therefore just go for the top nomatter what.

i don't think there is a definitive answer to your question, just test, review and test again till you hit the sweet spot.

briggidere

[eWhisper]

This is probably the best known study to date:
[clickz.com...]

With Google's new 3 ad format, I would expect their PPC CTR to be a bit higher now.

I would also expect Yahoo's to be a bit higher based on a few small tweaks they've made (do a search at Yahoo on a 800x600 monitor).

[inbound]

My experience suggests:

Google 75% organic clicks
Yahoo 60% organic clicks

[grandpa]

Great, thanks.

I've flagged this thread and will have a closer look when I get back from a rare weekend away. I've also pulled about a years worth of visitor history off my web server and will be trying to get some meaningful data from that.

Cheers.

[grandpa]

eWhisper, I wanted to say I've read that study and it is indeed interesting reading. I'm sure there are more studies like that, and I have a better idea of what to look for now. After 3 days of number crunching my own data I'm still not close to producing a similar report, but I'm getting there!
Thanks again.