How Much of It Is Real? Analysis of Paid Placement in Web Search Engine Results

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.