User Behavior Confirms Marketing Truths - Top of Results Equals Top of Field?
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Finally I’ve reached one of the more unusual findings of the survey. Back in 2002, survey respondents were asked to “Please state how much you agree/disagree with the following statement: ‘Seeing a company listed among the top results on a search engine makes me think that the company is a top one within its field.’” Fully one third of the respondents (33 percent) agreed with the statement, while the rest disagreed.
The result was nearly flat for 2006. Thirty-six percent agreed with the statement. In this version of the survey, though, respondents were given the option of neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Thirty-nine percent took this neutral stance, while one-quarter disagreed with the statement.
Why do so many search engine users subscribe to this equation? Indeed, why does roughly the same percentage continue to do so after four years? iProspect doesn’t think it’s the same users believing the same thing; rather, as experienced web surfers become more savvy, new web surfers join the population, thus keeping the percentages similar. With the total population of U.S. households with a computer (and presumably Internet access) expected to reach a saturation point well before the end of this decade, the percentage of users who believe top of search engine rankings equals top of field can be expected to go down.
What does that mean for search engine marketers? Well, if some significant percentage of web surfers seem to think that search engines put some variable equating to “industry leadership” into their algorithms, they should take advantage of that while they can. Indeed, iProspect suggests that “Brand marketers would be well advised to not only pay attention to, but also become involved in, the efforts of their search engine marketing colleagues, as it is clear that these efforts produce positive branding results.” Indeed, this is one “trend” that will probably not last too much longer.
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