𝔖 Bobbio Scriptorium
✦   LIBER   ✦

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

✍ Scribed by Scott Nicholson; Tito Sierra; U. Yeliz Eseryel; Ji-Hong Park; Philip Barkow; Erika J. Pozo; Jane Ward


Publisher
John Wiley and Sons
Year
2006
Tongue
English
Weight
198 KB
Volume
57
Category
Article
ISSN
1532-2882

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis


Abstract

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.