Among other things, the study proved that search listings outscore banner and tile advertisements by 2 to 1 (no surprise there) in regard to click-throughs.

Most Interesting: results showed that traffic arriving from search listings resulted in 55% of all Internet purchases as compared to only 9% for banners. As we interpret this statistic using our own marketing knowledge, we'll theorize that top listings, untainted by advertising dollars in the mind of the consuming public, kick the stuffing out of traditional commercial "paid for" ads such as banners.

As an side note, I've read Planet Ocean's 125 page book entitled "UnFair Advantage in Winning the Search Engine Wars." Although there are many search engine positioning resources out there, their book is one of the best I've run across in my five years in this industry.

The Unfair Advantage book and the monthly updates include more practical, hands on advice than you'll find in most SEO books. I've also been an avid reader of their monthly newsletter for years. Among new tips and search engine news each month, they update various quick reference charts on the search engines, which I personally find invaluable. For example, from their charts you can look up everything from the maximum number of characters that each engine will read from your title tag, to which engines will and will not index your ALT image tags. WebPosition's Page Critic and the MarketPosition newsletter are both great tools to minimize your workload and to help launch your site to the top.

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