New research has published the latest search engine click through ratio which compares the number of people clicking on the “free” organic results against the “paid for” Pay Per Click ads results.
Search engine users overwhelmingly click on organic results on Google and Bing by a massive margin of 94% over PPC ads at 6%.
The research was based on 1.4 billion searches conducted by 28 million UK citizens, so it’s results are statistically significant and reliable.
The study delved a little deeper than just organic vs. PPC. On the organic side, the research also broke down brand vs. non-brand click-through rates.
Branded search
The top search result overwhelmingly received the most clicks, here’s the breakdown:
Result 1: 80%
Result 2: 6%
Result 3: 4%
Remainder: 10%
Non branded search
The results indicate that searchers are more willing to go beyond the top 3 results, which is good news for sites that don’t have the luxury of ranking in the top spots in Google. Here is the breakdown:
Result 1: 35%
Result 2: 15%
Result 3: 11%
Remainder: 39%
On the “paid for” side, the research revealed some demographic data about who is most likely to click on PPC results. Here’s the breakdown:
- 53% of women are more likely to click on paid search ads than men
- Less than half (47%) of men click of paid ads
- Only 35% of searchers aged 34 and younger click on paid ads
- 65% of ad click come from searchers older than 35
So if you are targetting young males- stick to search engine optimisation for your online marketing priorities.
The Google vs. Bing comparison
Unsurprisingly Google is the winner here – 91% of all searches on Google are deemed successful, while only 76% of Bing searches were rated as successful.
Overall- the bleedin obvious is that if you haven’t got your website ranking in the top organic results via an SEO campaign, then you will be missing out on very valuable traffic, sales and profits. If you would like some on developing your online business then please click the button: 
The research was conducted by MGroupUK and Nielsen