Google published its earnings last month, reporting its search result sites generated revenues of $3.40 billion in the first quarter of 2008.
Meanwhile, an iProspect study showed that 60.5 per cent of Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL users selected a natural (unpaid) search result over paid search result as the most relevant on a sample query. Additionally, 60.8% of Yahoo and 72.3% of Google search engine users chose a natural search result as the most relevant.
The conclusion: appearing on natural rankings is most valuable to businesses. Natural search results are more trusted by online users and attract more clicks.
