Post by People Browse on Mar 22, 2012 13:51:26 GMT -5
From Wikipedia:
The Google, Yahoo!, and Bing search engines combine advertising and search results on their search results pages. In each case, the ads are designed to look similar to the search results, though differ in formatting enough for readers to make distinctions between organic results and ads, such as their background colour and/or placement on the page. Further, the appearance of the ads on all major search engines is so similar to the genuine search results that a large majority of search engine users cannot effectively distinguish between them.
Because so few ordinary users (38% according to Pew Research Center) realized that many of the highest placed "results" on search engine results pages were actually ads, it became important within the search engine optimization industry to distinguish between the two types of content. As the perspective among general users was that all the results were in fact "results", the qualifier "organic" was invented to distinguish the real search results from the ads. Because the distinction is important (and because the word "organic" has many metaphorical uses) the term is now in widespread use within the search engine optimization and web marketing industry. It is, as of July 2009, now in common currency outside the specialist web marketing industry, being used frequently by Google (throughout the Google Analytics site, for instance).
Google claims that their users click (organic) search results more often than ads, which has led them to rebut the research cited above.
The same report (and others going back to 1997[citation needed]) by Pew shows that users avoid clicking "results" that they know to be ads.
Users can prevent ads from being shown in search results, and list only organic search results, by using browser add-ons and plugins. Other browsers may have different tools developed for blocking ads
Posted by People Browse
The Google, Yahoo!, and Bing search engines combine advertising and search results on their search results pages. In each case, the ads are designed to look similar to the search results, though differ in formatting enough for readers to make distinctions between organic results and ads, such as their background colour and/or placement on the page. Further, the appearance of the ads on all major search engines is so similar to the genuine search results that a large majority of search engine users cannot effectively distinguish between them.
Because so few ordinary users (38% according to Pew Research Center) realized that many of the highest placed "results" on search engine results pages were actually ads, it became important within the search engine optimization industry to distinguish between the two types of content. As the perspective among general users was that all the results were in fact "results", the qualifier "organic" was invented to distinguish the real search results from the ads. Because the distinction is important (and because the word "organic" has many metaphorical uses) the term is now in widespread use within the search engine optimization and web marketing industry. It is, as of July 2009, now in common currency outside the specialist web marketing industry, being used frequently by Google (throughout the Google Analytics site, for instance).
Google claims that their users click (organic) search results more often than ads, which has led them to rebut the research cited above.
The same report (and others going back to 1997[citation needed]) by Pew shows that users avoid clicking "results" that they know to be ads.
Users can prevent ads from being shown in search results, and list only organic search results, by using browser add-ons and plugins. Other browsers may have different tools developed for blocking ads
Posted by People Browse
