Relevancy Rules in Top Sponsored Ads

Notes from an eye tracking study confirm that organic listings are still the most relevant for most searchers!

"Here's what we took from the numbers. On Google, although over 80% of searchers started in the top sponsored, only 26% found something relevant and compelling enough to click on, and remember, these were commercial, product oriented searches. On Yahoo, 84% started in top sponsored, but in Yahoo�s case, about 30% stuck around and clicked an ad. And with MSN, something entirely different was going on. It seems that MSN users have a bad case of banner blindness when it comes to top sponsored ads."

This blog points out that searchers focus initially on the sponsored ads at the top of the page (since our natural focal point on a new page is at the upper left of the page). It goes on to say that, although searchers focus first on the ads, they don't primarily choose to follow the ads with a click. In other words, even though they look first at the sponsored ads, they still choose to click on the organic listings!