Search demographics & CTRs

[shorebreak]

Just read the results of an interesting survey by iProspect, and one of the conclusions is that different demographics have different click-through-rates between natural and paid search.

[emediawire.com...]

Question to everyone here - do you think that these demographic variations in *CTR* are more or less pronounced than the demographic differences in *conversion rates*?

I'd be interested to hear what everyone has to say on the topic.

Thanks,

[edited by: msgraph at 1:45 pm (utc) on May 19, 2004]
[edit reason] fixed url link [/edit]

[Receptional]

We saw this a while back and we had a short discussion internally.

In itself the research is interesting but the data revolves around one search - specifically a car related search. As we know, different industries exhibit very different user behaviour. It stands to reason that Skateboard enthusiasts will avoid the PPC results whilst Bankers will avoid the freebie results. (Not so sure about skate-boarding bankers.)

I think we cannot make ANY inferences about conversion rates from this survey... and we also felt that the conversion rates question was the more fundamental to us and our own clients.

Dixon.