SEO Studies & White Papers

[cjreynolds]

Hi everyone, I'm in the middle of an interesting study ranking the importance of factors determining CTR on Overture (or YSMS if you like) & AdWords as the final year dissertation of my degree.

The problem is I'm having trouble locating relevant academic & industry sources to reference to support my underlying assumptions. I’ve interrogated the EBSCO and EBSCO Tech databases and come up with only a handful of semi-relevant studies.

Particularly (and I know this is daft) but does anyone know of some credible figures illustrating the link between CTR and search ranking. Also are there any publicly available CTR averages for AdWords.

Look forward to hearing your suggestions.

[Chris_D]

Hi cjreynolds,

Welcome to the forums!

:)

You question has me slightly confused - are you talking about the effect of the CTR on the position of that adwords advertisement?

Or about some relationship between Adwords and the algorithmic serps? Your use of SEO in the title confused me....

The adwords system uses CTR as part of the formula for determing ad position:
Your ad is ranked on the search results and content pages based on various performance factors including: maximum cost-per-click (CPC), clickthrough rate (CTR), and ad text. Having relevant ad text, a high CPC and a strong CTR will result in a higher position for your ad.
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6111&ctx=en:search&query=ctr&topic=0&type=f

Overture doesn't.

As far as CTR in adwords, AWA recently commented:

the average ctr, system wide, hovers at slightly above 2%
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum81/5042.htm

[cjreynolds]

Hi Chris, sorry I wasn't particularly clear - what I'm looking for specifically are academic studies or articles or very credible industry figures to satisfy those people who will be grading my research.

What I meant by the SEO reference was that in the rationale I have to explain that the higher a listing (wether Paid or Organic) appears on a results page the more likely searchers are to click on it - daft but necessary to explain to people completely new to search engine marketing.

Those links are great though - I've been hunting high and low for a system wide CTR average for AdWords and having one or two references from an online forum makes me look ‘cutting-edge’ :)

Thanks for your help and I wonder - has anyone else submitted a paper on PPC/SEO for a BA/Masters/PHD? I'd be interested to know how you got on.

Chris Reynolds

[Chris_D]

Hi Chris,

I have to explain that the higher a listing (wether Paid or Organic) appears on a results page the more likely searchers are to click on it

Something like this?

A joint eye tracking study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools has shown that the vast majority of eye tracking activity during a search happens in a triangle at the top of the search results page indicating that the areas of maximum interest create a “golden triangle.”
The first phase of the study was conducted with 50 people in Eyetools’ eye tracking lab in San Francisco, California
http://www.enquiro.com/eye-tracking-pr.asp

[Robert_Charlton]

Here's the same article on prweb, with some downloadable graphics files that may be useful for your report...

Did-it, Enquiro, and Eyetools Uncover Google’s Golden Triangle
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/3/prweb213516.htm

There's also a thread that's active right now on this site that quotes some statistics and indicates their source, though doesn't provide a url...

top position click through
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=5545

And, somewhere on the Overture site a couple of years back there was a study that talked about the desirability of the top 3 positions (which coincidentally is mainly what Overture sells ;) ). Maybe someone can point you too it.

[cjreynolds]

Thanks thats just the ticket, it will underpin the rationale for this study nicely (& the diagrams make me look all scientific :) )

Is it me or is there a complete lack of academic recognition for the power of Search Engine and Online marketing generally? The only interesting research is coming from the industry itself (Jupiter, SEMPO etc.) Towards the end of the literature review I've made the point:

"Few published and peer reviewed academic articles deal with the subject of search engine marketing and more particularly paid for search engine inclusion. The majority of useful reports specific to this industry are produced for commercial consumption. It may even be argued that in an industry which can (and regularly is) revolutionised overnight by a new innovation, a change in search engine algorithms or a new deal between major players, the system of peer review reacts too slowly to produce useful data. That is not to say that such data does not exist, far from it, but instead it is to be found in industry publications, commercial research studies and even in online discussion forums"

Would you agree?

Also are any universities offering a BA/Masters in marketing which includes meaningful SEO/PPC content? If not then an opportunity perhaps?

Chris Reynolds

[andrewgoodman]

Thanks thats just the ticket, it will underpin the rationale for this study nicely (& the diagrams make me look all scientific :) )

Is it me or is there a complete lack of academic recognition for the power of Search Engine and Online marketing generally? The only interesting research is coming from the industry itself (Jupiter, SEMPO etc.) Towards the end of the literature review I've made the point:

"Few published and peer reviewed academic articles deal with the subject of search engine marketing and more particularly paid for search engine inclusion. The majority of useful reports specific to this industry are produced for commercial consumption. It may even be argued that in an industry which can (and regularly is) revolutionised overnight by a new innovation, a change in search engine algorithms or a new deal between major players, the system of peer review reacts too slowly to produce useful data. That is not to say that such data does not exist, far from it, but instead it is to be found in industry publications, commercial research studies and even in online discussion forums"

Would you agree?

Also are any universities offering a BA/Masters in marketing which includes meaningful SEO/PPC content? If not then an opportunity perhaps?

Chris Reynolds

The academic research is indeed well behind, but there is some interesting stuff out there. Eric Goldman (http://eric_goldman.tripod.com/personal/ericgoldmancv.htm) has written a number of academic papers on trademark and SEM for example. Bhargava et al., "Paid Placement Strategies for Internet Search Engines," shows that some research is starting to get done out there. (found this by searching on Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=paid+search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Search) ).

Eye tracking is useful if you realize that the data are incomplete and could be misleading. Usability labs don't tell you the same thing as I might see for example if I looked at a handful of behavioral results for my own clients in X industry. Or if you got to look at Google's actual data, for example.

Since the data on CTR's by ad position as collected by SE's are actually proprietary, you don't get to hear much about them, but it does indeed drop off significantly as you go down the page. The lack of access to these proprietary sources of info is why we are grateful when someone undertakes an eye tracking study. But the world beyond the sample group in such a study is large and diverse, so I'd take those results with a grain of salt. Is there anyone in an eye tracking study who is unaware of their surroundings, unaware that they are using a device that is measuring their habits, and just behaving as they normally would? I doubt it.

Some other useful questions to ask might be: under what conditions do users click several (3 or more) ads on the page? When or why do they click on ads that appear in 5th position or lower?

The big question too is whether so-called banner blindness will set in, putting downward pressure on sponsored listing CTR's. The last major commentary on that issue by Jakob Nielsen ("Will Plain Text Ads Continue to Rule"?) is quite old by now. Wonder if it's time for a new thought or two on that issue.

Good luck with your research!

[GOTseo]

Thank Goodness I handle the sales end of things :)

[orion]

Hi everyone, I'm in the middle of an interesting study ranking the importance of factors determining CTR on Overture (or YSMS if you like) & AdWords as the final year dissertation of my degree.


Here over at this thread I posted a technical paper on AdWords that may help you:

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=46801#post46801

I hope this help.


Orion

[cjreynolds]

Hi all, thanks for all your help - it was tremendously useful. I recieved an A15 for the sudy overall (out of a possible 16) this may be because whoever marked it did'nt know what AdWords is :) . I cited this forum througout the study - er.. so well done you guys.

Chris