Document Type
Article
Date
2006
Embargo Period
4-24-2012
Keywords
search engines, results ranking, query structure, sponsored results
Disciplines
Library and Information Science
Description/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 non-sponsored results. For general search tools like Google, 56 % of the first screen and 82 % of the first Web page contain non-sponsored results. Other results include that query structure makes a significant difference in the percentage of non-sponsored results returned by a search. Similarly, the topic of the query can also have a significant effect on the percentage of sponsored results displayed by most Web search tools.
Recommended Citation
Nicholson, S., Sierra, T., Eseryel, U. Y., Park, J., Barkow, P., Pozo, E., & Ward, J. (2006). How much of it is real? Analysis of paid placement in Web search engine results. Journal for the American Society of Information Science and Technology 57(4), 448-461.
Source
local input
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.