Over the past several years, there has been much discussion about user preferences regarding click-through rates for the organic search results and the paid results (eg Adwords).

Recently, in discussing the advantages and disadvantages associated with each class of results, we decided to dig a bit deeper into the user bias against paid results, to understand: 1) the extent of user bias regarding "sponsored links" and organic results; and 2) if such a bias is dependent on the type of search (eg informational, product search, location-based search) being conducted.

While googling to get more data on this, the most common article that came up was by Scott Buresh, CEO of Medium Blue, an SEO company, entitled "Organic SEO or Pay-Per-Click Advertising - Which Should You Choose?" As the CEO of an SEO company, one would expect he'd prejudice working on your organic SEO rather than relying on PPC (eg Adwords) to increase traffic, and he does.

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