New Study Asks If Users Are Ignoring Paid Search Listings

[Kristijntje]

... a new Nielsen Norman Group study that argues that banner blindness has been followed by search listing blindness...

Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) brought foveal action into the spotlight last week with its latest round of usability and eye tracking studies that sought to answer a very important question about user behavior. Are users becoming blind to search listings-- particularly the sponsored listings that marketers pay for and which get displayed in different ways on different search engines?...

We have known for some time that misspellings are money makers in paid search. If nothing else, this validates misspellings as an effective search engine advertising or natural search engine optimization practice...

full article: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/8953.asp

related discussion in this topic: http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...072.0.html

[bargainbloodhound]

banner blindness has been followed by search listing blindness

That's basically my feelings on it too.  I definitely think AdWords type ads are less effective then they were 2 years ago.