Why hang out with the people who pay into a venue when you can hang out with the cool people who get in for free?

Based on a recent report from Mulley communications, this seems to be the attitude of Irish visitors to Google. The conclusion is that the first 3 organic results are key - in other words the Gold, Silver and Bronze steps on the winner’s podium – and that the sponsored results hardly attract a glance from Irish Googlers.

The findings more or less reflect a survey done by Amarach Consulting back in early 2007. Back then it seemed that 2% of searchers clicked on sponsored links every time they did a search. 15% did so quite often. 48% rarely did. And 34% never did. And interestingly, 35 - 44 year olds were most likely to click on the sponsored links, and women were far more likely to do so than men . . . well it is a form of shopping.

However, things have moved along in the two years since the Amarach survey. As Damien Mulley points out Twitter and Facebook are shifting the balance of web power.

There is no doubt that these emerging heavyweights are diminishing Google’s attraction. The search engine have long been making noises about intelligent or semantic search, results that somehow manage to algorthymically (not sure if that is a word) deliver intelligent answers to questions (not sure if that is a possibility). However, Twitter and Facebook are already fulfilling that role. If you want real answers, you can now ask real people in real time.

For the immediate future anyway, Google will continue to be a prime means of attracting relevant visitors to your website and product, but the conclusion for marketers has to be that Adwords alone are not the answer. In the same way as organic vegetables, organic results are far better for you.

Jim Murray - Prosperity