According to a new report by online intelligence experts Hitwise, there has been a substantial drop in the overall share of Pay Per Click Advertising traffic, compared to the amount of traffic generated from the organic or natural search engine listings.

Whilst total search engine traffic is still on the increase, the market share for Pay Per Click advertising appears to have dropped significantly.

According to the Hitwise Report “the share of traffic coming from Search Engine Advertising is decreasing at the expense of organic traffic.”

“In the four weeks to May 9, 2009, 7.25% of search engine traffic to all categories of websites was from paid clicks. This compares to 9.84% in the same four week period in 2008 – representing a 26% decline in the share of paid clicks. This trend is apparent across 16 of the 17 Hitwise parent categories (i.e. Automotive, Food and Beverage, Health and Medical, etc). The only category that didn’t see a decline in paid traffic was Education, which received 1.45% of search visits from paid clicks compared to 1.39% last year.”

Heather Hopkins from Hitwise says “I’m sure that marketing budgets are tightening up with cost management pressures, but maybe the drop in paid search’s share is more a reflection of changing search behavior. It’s been a well documented fact that organic listings carry more credibility and trust with searchers than their paid listing counterparts – so perhaps this provides more insight into the trend. Tough times force searchers/buyers to become more diligent in researching purchases, which sees them reverting to sources they trust more.”

This trend highlights the importance of making sure that your website is properly optimised and made as search engine friendly as possible. With the proliferation of search engine advertising over the past few years, many website owners have placed Professional SEO on the back burner. This changing search behaviour suggests that now, more than ever, that website owners should consider moving their Web Page Optimisation efforts higher up the list of priorities.

However, whilst search engine advertising may be losing some of its share to organic search results, it is still driving sizable traffic referrals – and should not be ignored.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 20:08 and is filed under Pay Per Click Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.