How much of it is real? Analysis of paid placement in Web search engine results

• Published in: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 2006-02, Vol.57 (4), p.448-461
• Main Authors: Nicholson, Scott, Sierra, Tito, Eseryel, U. Yeliz, Park, Ji-Hong, Barkow, Philip, Pozo, Erika J., Ward, Jane
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Exact sciences and technology; Information and communication sciences; Information processing and retrieval; Information retrieval. Man machine relationship; Information science. Documentation; Online advertising; Online information retrieval; Paid placement; Real estate; Research process. Evaluation; Sciences and techniques of general use; Search engines; Sponsors; Sponsorship; Studies; Websites; World Wide Web
• ISSN: 1532-2882; 2330-1635; 1532-2890; 2330-1643
• DOI: 10.1002/asi.20318

Most Web search tools integrate sponsored results with results from their internal editorial database in providing results to users. The goal of this research is to get a better idea of how much of the screen real estate displays “real” editorial results as compared to sponsored results. The overall average results are that 40% of all results presented on the first screen are “real” results, and when the entire first Web page is considered, 67% of the results are nonsponsored results. For general search tools such as Google, 56% of the first screen and 82% of the first Web page contain nonsponsored results. Other results include that query structure makes a significant difference in the percentage of nonsponsored results returned by a search. Similarly, the topic of the query also can have a significant effect on the percentage of sponsored results displayed by most Web search tools.