For the following study, we asked "Does this search result have ads on it? " to 1,000 searchers, per search results. Due to these surveys requiring a smaller image (to fit the ad unit size) we chose search results that generally had more ads on them (typically 3 or 4) so that the background had a significant portion of real estate devoted to ads, in spite of its small size. The one exception here was DuckDuckGo, as it only displays one ad at most even on highly commercial keywords like credit cards.

Other than resizing the search result to fit, the only modifications we generally made were removing the graphic picture from the Wikipedia page near the top of the DuckDuckGo SERP (since a prior study showed that users presumed there was a correlation between graphics and the perception of ads) and that in most cases we removed the right sidebar. We did include the sidebar ads on 3 different Bing, Google, & Yahoo! search results so that we could compare the impact of sidebar ads vs not having a sidebar.

Executive Summary

The 3 big takeaways are:

• For most search engines, people are generally unaware of ads vs organic results if there are no ads in the right column ... most of these yes/no questions came down to about a 50/50 vote, even though all of them had ads on them. It is every bit as true today as it was in 2003.
• If there is a right column, the percent of people who voted that there are ads on the page jumps significantly. Thus it is pretty safe to say that people think ads are in the right column & that the right column is ads.
  • In part perhaps due to placement and a lack of user knowledge between ads vs content, paid ads do significantly cannibalize organic traffic.
  • SERP heat maps have shown heavy focus on the left column. This is perhaps why Google feels comfortable putting brand oriented Google+ promotions in the right column, while they put further ads at the bottom of the organic search results - people tend to view the left rail as organic search results and the right rail as ads.
  • In the past Google also stated that graphic product ads in the right column got about double the CTR of text ads in the same location, thus if Google ever offers search-branding graphical campaigns I would expect those to primarily appear in the right column.
• Interestingly, among major search engines, Yahoo! (without sidebar) got more "yes, it has ads" votes than other search engines. In fact, Yahoo! without sidebar ads scored within 1% of Bing with sidebar ads.
  • Years ago they decided to get out of search in part because they under-monetized competitors (in part due to paying arbitrages to destroy their click value by pumping their network full of fraudulent clicks). Advertisers didn't even have a mechanism to opt out of such scammy ad syndication until AFTER Yahoo! signed the search deal with Bing.
  • Yahoo! still under-monetizes search (& complains about it publicly, blaming Bing) in part because Bing cut out a lot of the arbitrage, in part due to ad matching issues on longtail queries, and in part because Yahoo!'s ad background color is more noticeable to users, where other portals and search companies like Google & Bing blend it in so well that many users simply can not see it, particularly on laptops and older computers. Ask is the most aggressive ad blender of all search engines. If you click through to their results from a Google ad it plants a cookie to remove the background color on the Ask search result ads on all subsequent searches until you clear that cookie.

Combined Survey Results

For the question Does this search results have ads on it?

User Voting Images

Here are the images users saw when they voted:

AOL SERP

Ask SERP

Ask Arbitrage SERP

Bing SERP

Bing With Sidebar SERP

Dogpile SERP

DuckDuckGo SERP

Google SERP

Google With Sidebar SERP

Yahoo! SERP

Yahoo! With Sidebar SERP

Which SERP Has an Ad? (Maps vs AdWords Ads)

Prior to doing the above study, we asked users to please click on the search result which has an ad in it, listing search results side by side. Any bias presented in this (outside of both having smaller than actual sizes) impacts both images. At first we did a regular Google SERP where we included the branding & then we followed up with one that is more zoomed in on the actual search results but does not include branding. On the one that was less zoomed in people thought the map was an ad more often, but upon further zooming they thought it was roughly 50/50.

SERP	All (1172)
Left	53.7% (+3.3 / -3.4)
Right	46.3% (+3.4 / -3.3)

SERP	All (1198)
Left	49.6% (+3.4 / -3.4)
Right	50.4% (+3.4 / -3.4)

Comparing Google+ to Ads

Does this search result have ads on it?

Searchers tend to think that Google+ integration in the right rail is an ad unit. More people voted that Google+ without ads had ads in the search results than a SERP with 4 AdWords ad units and no Google+ integration.

Search Engine Ad Background Color

After seeing that users generally guessed no better than a coin toss at best in most cases, we decided to ask What background color do Google search results use to denote top left search advertisements? The same question was asked of Yahoo! & Bing search results.

Bing scored highest, however blue also scored as the 2nd highest color for all 3 search engines. Nearly half of searchers believe that top ads have a white background, which highlights a general widespread lack of awareness of search ads.

Ad Location on the SERP

Given how little awareness users have of ad background color, I decided to ask: Where might ads appear on search results at top search engines like Bing & Google?

Less than 3 in 10 answered the question correctly & nearly 20% of people do not think search results carry any ads, which explains how an algorithmic penalty can create a bad quarter, why Google was sued in Australia for misleading ads & why the Rosetta Stone vs Google case was overturned. Next time you hear a search engineer talk about clearly labeling paid links, ask them why they do such a poor job of it themselves!

User Trust in Ad Versus Organic Results

Ever since search engines have weeded out some of the more exploitative reverse billing fraud ads, trust in online ads has been growing. Based on the above, we wanted to see how users perceive ads vs organic search results, so I asked: Search engines include both algorithmic search results and ads in them. Which do you trust more?

The above result surprised me given how people disliked money influencing search results. It is a strong compliment to the ads that only 40% of people trust the editorial more than the ads. However this number might be thrown off by the fact that many people are unaware of where the ads actually appear in the search results & what results are ads. (As noted above, most people voted that they thought that either search ads were only in the right column or that there weren't ads in the SERPs.)

Making Up for the Small Image Problem

One of the bigger issues with Google's current survey solution is that you are limited to rather small sized images. Such limitations do not harm asking a question like "what color does Google use for x" but they do make the search result a bit harder to see. To compensate for that problem we ran a separate survey on AYTM, where users were able to view a search result in full screen mode for 10 seconds & then they were asked 3 questions.

The purpose of the first question was to put a few seconds in between them seeing the image and them answering the second question. One other improvement that was made here (in addition to allowing users to see a larger sized search result image) was that we added an "I am not sure" answer to the questions. Below are the responses in table + graphic form, followed by the AYTM widget.

Where May Ads Appear on Google's Search Results Page?

Did the Viewed Search Result Have Any Ads On It?

What Background Color Does Google Use to Denote Ads At the Top Left of Their Search Results?

Even directly after viewing a search result with 3 ads in it, most users are uncertain of where ads may appear, what color the ads are, and if the search result even had any ads in it!

Users confusing the yellow background as white shortly after seeing it is anything but an accident:

In a RGB color space, hex #fef7e6 is composed of 99.6% red, 96.9% green and 90.2% blue. Whereas in a CMYK color space, it is composed of 0% cyan, 2.8% magenta, 9.4% yellow and 0.4% black. It has a hue angle of 42.5 degrees, a saturation of 92.3% and a lightness of 94.9%. #fef7e6 color hex could be obtained by blending #ffffff with #fdefcd. .

If you have an older monitor or a laptop which you are viewing at an angle these colors are nearly impossible to see.

Embed The AYTM Graph in Your Website

Here is the AYTM widget of the above 1,000 person survey, which you can embed in your website.

Ask Your Target Market via SEO Book

Embed Code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://aytm.com/bw/js/bw_share.js#ct=pie&c=a&w=450&h=693&t=a24480445b199e112638"></script> <div id="aytm_a24480445b199e112638" style="width:450px;padding-bottom:47px;text-align:center;"><img src="https://aytm.com/p/450/693.png" alt="aytm.com" style="margin-bottom:-47px;" /><a href="https://aytm.com/surveys/166382/statistic/charts/5def7435641f9235fe17dc70de765892" target="_blank" style="margin-left:60px;text-align:left;display:block;font-size:13px;color:#29abe2;text-decoration:none;font-family:Calibri,Trebuchet MS;">Ask Your Target Market</a> via <a href="http://www.seobook.com/consumer-ad-awareness-search-results">SEO Book</a></div>

If you use a search engine but don't find what you are looking for, which are you more likely to do?

People are more likely to search again with a new keyword than they are to click onto the second page of search results.

The split is fairly consistent among men and women.

There isn't an obvious pattern among age either.

People in the west & midwest are more likely to change keywords, whereas people in the north east & south are roughly equally likely to change keywords or go to page 2 of the search results.

Suburban people are more likely to change keywords than to click on to page 2.

There isn't much of an income correlation either.

It would also be interesting to run this question again & include the option of trying another search engine as an answer.

In the below poll we didn't make any distinction between AdWords & organic SEO investments. If we did I am not sure how it would have impacted the voting.

How do you feel about people paying for placement in search engines?

Nearly 2 in 3 people dislike money manipulating search results.

Women tend to dislike it slightly more than men.

Older people tend to think money influencing search is manipulative, as do younger people who have not had their idealism beaten out of them by the harshness of the world. However the people in the 25 to 34 range who grew up with the web tend to like paid search far more than other groups do.

People in the south tend to dislike money influencing search than any other region & people out west are more accepting of it. Perhaps the audience from California is more likely to understand how search impacts the local economy?

Rural people dislike money influencing search more than urban people do.

Income has essentially no impact on the perception of the influence of money in search (though there was insufficient data at the upper end of the income range).

As publishers we tend to be quite concerned with the over-promotion of Google+ because it carves up the search landscape, is potentially another hoop that we have to jump through, and in some cases, the Google+ hosted version of a page will outrank the legitimate original source - which screws up the economics of online publishing.

But do users care about how Google+ was integrated directly into the search results? Generally no.

How do you feel Google+ integration has impacted Google's relevancy?

Under 1 in 5 people said it made the search results better, under 1 in 5 said it made the search results worse & over 3 in 5 didn't notice any material impact.

Men liked it slightly more than women. However, that difference was within the estimated range of error. If this difference was more significant one might guestimate that women are better at socializing offline & have less need for artificial web relationships, given their relatively larger corpus callosum. ;)

Older people are less likely to have loads of online friends & relationships (as they spent most of their lives building relationships in the physical world, before the web or online social networks were popular). Older people also tend to be more set in their ways. Thus many older people won't be signed up for Google+ & won't notice as much of an impact from it.

Younger people are more likely to want to try out new technology, thus they are more likely to notice an impact from it. Some generations tend to be more isolated & individualistic (like the baby boomers) while millennials tend to like to work in groups & network more (it isn't an accident that Facebook started on a college campus & targeted college students), thus younger people are not only more likely to notice something like Google+, but they are also more likely to like its impact.

I didn't notice any obvious trends or patterns aligned with locations across the country.

Suburban people were more likely to notice an impact, though they were not heavily skewed in one way or the other

People who earned less were less likely to notice positive or negative impact from Google+ integration (somewhat surprising since younger people tend to skew toward lower incomes & younger people were more likely to notice & like Google+ integration). Outside of that, the data is too bunched up to see any other significant patterns based on income.

Overture wasn't able to build itself into a credible search destination in part because their brand was positioned incorrectly as being primarily about paid ads that only would backfill with other results in when the ad auction was empty, so as a destination it was seen as a payolla engine. Likewise AOL peaked because it was seen as a walled garden & couldn't keep up with DSL and the open web.

Search engines have recently pushed aggressively to revive the Web 0.1 game of walled gardens. Ever since I have been in search, Ask has been a (the?) leader in arbitrage. To this day IAC is Google's #1 advertiser & while AOL's search marketshare keeps dropping like a rock, Ask has managed to hold their marketshare relatively constant while over-monetizing the search results.

Even though Ask exited algorithmic search, IAC's stock price is up over 160% since they split off their other companies.

What makes that growth even more impressive is when it is compared against Google or Yahoo!.

Yahoo! bowed out of search, outsourcing to Bing. Over the past year Yahoo! has dialed up on over-promotion of their verticals in the search results quite aggressively.

In the above search result, Yahoo! ...

• added an "official site" label & favicon to the PPC ad
• inserted Yahoo! finance
• inserted Yahoo! Search sitesearch
• inserted Yahoo! Deals coupons (with a huge graphic)
• inserted Yahoo! Downloads (with a big button)

While Yahoo! has been able to increase "engagement" they have done so in part at the expense of losing users.

Surely some of that loss is due to Google's Chrome promotions, but that doesn't put Yahoo! in any stronger of a competitive position going forward, especially as Google clones their portal model.

Increasingly, when we search & when we surf the web it is getting harder to leave the networks we are on. Facebook offers advertisers discounts for advertising other Facebook pages. YouTube signs premium content partners like Motor Trend (and backfill garbage) & then advertises the manufacturer YouTube channels next to that content. The user never leaves the portal throughout the entire process & brands are forced to buy their own pre-existing brand equity, or Google will sell it off to competitors.

Google recently added a Yahoo!-like global portal navigation bar at the top of their pages & Google+ gets over-represented in the organic search results. Even while not logged in & doing advanced longtail searches Google still shows promotional Google+ boxes like this one:

A couple years ago Amit Singhal said:

“We deal with those responsibilities by having very concrete principles. All rankings are decided algorithmically, and the focus is on user benefit, not advertiser or commercial benefit. We ask ourselves, ‘Can a random company who does not want to be part of any Google system be harmed by a change we’re proposing?’ If they are, we won’t do it.”

Today that is simply not true.

Then again, who would expect the head of organizing the world's information during the information age to have a year or two of foresight? Or, is the double-speak intentional:

"Things keep happening where you can’t even trust [Google's] word. I don’t think they were ever not evil." - Danny Sullivan

Now that Google may show AdWords ads at the bottom of the search results, Google is testing showing fewer organic listings on navigational searches. In some cases the 7 Google Places listings act as 7 results & the search results only contain 3 other listings. What's even uglier than this is a new enhanced AdWords sitelink option where a single ad unit takes up nearly a third of the screen real estate on a large monitor (and much more on a smaller screen).

And that doesn't account for all of Google's various vertical search services & the ways Google inserts itself into the sales stream, with...

• Google Checkout & Google Wallet
• Software: Android Apps, Chrome Apps & their Enterprise Marketplace @ google.com/enterprise/marketplace/
• Google Offers
• Google Books ebook sales
• Google Music song downloads
• YouTube movie rentals

And even when you leave Google, they invest in heavily SEOed sites and are still tracking you wherever & however they can, even if it violates Safari or Internet Explorer terms of service. Such an anti-privacy policy works brilliantly for ad networks (so long as users do not get creeped out) as the ad networks can slice and dice who receives how much credit for any measurable online action.

As Google redefines how credit is shared & competes more directly against publishers, those publishers need to adjust their business models. If Google grows too parasitic & captures too much of the value creation they will turn the media against them & give billions of Dollars worth of coverage to smaller search upstarts that actually respect their users.

Both DuckDuckGo & Blekko are increasing traffic & monetization.

Along with the nepotistic portalization of search, the rise of algorithmic journalism that can turn Tweets into an automated story puts further pressure on publishers. As the web becomes a series of walled gardens the opportunity in SEO diminishes, which is why some SEO websites want to drop the SEO label.

Want to see what Google will look like in a couple years? Set your default search engine to Yahoo! or Ask & you can see the future today. The push for social garbage & nepotism over quality will last until Google's search traffic chart looks like the above Yahoo! chart. At that point we will focus more on Bing & other search engines.