This morning I was looking at the presentation highlights from the Marketing Sherpa Search Marketing 2008 Benchmark Guide, which was the research on which my earlier blog on search in 2008 was based.

Interestingly, the presentation highlights some different aspects from those I noted before, which are interesting when you are looking at the overall search picture. Given  Craig's blog just over a month ago asking if Google really is the best search engine it is an interesting contrast from the Compete.com results about search fulfilment that in this survey 80% of the marketers measuring ROI said that Google deserves its number one position and prominence as it delivers the best return.

A very curious finding from the survey is the eyetracking results, that short URLs are better than longer ones.

Stefan Tornquist, Marketing Sherpa's Research Director says of this result "What we found that was very interesting to me, anyway, is that a long URL seems to have a negative effect on the ad of which it's a part. And when I say a long URL, I'm talking about one of those database-driven URLs that have many letters and numbers -- a completely obscure combination of figures. What that seems to do to the human eye and to our attention is to draw a line that people bump up against. Rather than attracting attention to the ad of which it's a part, it actually drives it to the next listing down."

So, having a long complicated URL actually benefits the person AFTER you in the search results! That's something we as SEOs certainly can't legislate for - what your neighbours in search appear like on the results page! We can help you sort out shorter, friendlier web addresses to maximise that effect, but this has an interesting effect on traffic from search engines.

Another factor that I have been interested in for a while that is addressed in this presentation is the synergy between natural search top positions and PPC ad placement. Several of our clients are with us for the stated aim of reducing PPC budgets - organic traffic doesn't cost incrementally in the same way that PPC does. However, this presentation gives an increase in PPC clicks as a result of having both natural and PPC top billing. The increase given is 92% - so almost double the response rate over a PPC ad with no natural search position.

That is quite a symbiosis! However, from a marketing perspective, it's more interesting that those people went on being engaged with the company and had more actions, page views, sales and time on site. This is assumed to be down to the expectation of relevance and thus trust, that organic search endows on the URL, whether they click on the natural or PPC listing. But it is also fascinating that this implies that a natural search top placement would make your PPC clicks go up and not down if you keep them both present, but that your ROI should also improve. An interesting conundrum for a marketer to ponder when looking at budgets and results.