Complete Idiots guide to search engines

A survey by The Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that Only 1 in 6 users of Internet search engines can tell the difference between unbiased search results and paid advertisements, a new survey finds

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/146/report_display.asp

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6861158/

Google Inc. marks such ads as "sponsored links," Yahoo Inc. terms them
"sponsor results" and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN uses "sponsored sites."
Such ads are placed to the right and on top of the regular search results,
in some cases highlighted in a different color.


But only 38 percent of Web searchers even know of the distinction, and of those, not even half — 47 percent — say they can always tell which are paid. That comes
out to only 18 percent of all Web searchers knowing when a link is paid.

Source : MSNBC / AP

So what does this mean for marketers?

Besides that a lot of our target audience may not be as savvy as we think they are in all things internet related, there are a lot of opportunities for online marketing and leveraging PPC ads (pay per click ads)

if you only reley on free search engine listings and not a PPC campaign, you are mistaken

You need to be aggressive in a PPC campaign, otherwise you are missing a lot of potential customers who do not know the difference between a SEO free listing (search engine optimized) and a PPC listing that is prominently displayed on the top or the right/left hand sides.

Make sure your site is already optimized for a free listing in the searches --
Google your firm and your competitors to see how and where they are listed, both in the free listings and in the ads. Also use other search engines: yahoo, MSN, etc.

Ask some of your customers how they “found you” see if they mention search engines, PPC ad or free listings, etc.

Start your google ads and then experiment with the content of the ads to make them seem more content / editorial-dreiven rather than advertising-centric

I currently advertise AJR and a lot of my clients via PPC, so we may need to re-think some of the content of our ads to ensure that we are optimizing our listings and paid search results to be in line with the results of this survey

would welcome feedback.