The findings showed organic search results were viewed 100% of the time, and participants spent an average of 14.7 and 10.7 seconds looking at organic search results on Google and Bing, respectively. However, only 28% of participants looked at right-side ads on Google, and just 21% did the same on Bing—spending around 1 second viewing all ads combined on each search engine. To put this in perspective, searchers who viewed the left-hand site navigation spent more time doing so than they did viewing ads on both search engines.

One caveat to the study: It was an artificial search environment. The participants were given search terms to use and may not have been regular Bing or Google users. However, participants searched on both sites in this study, and the results were statistically significant.

With users spending nearly all their time viewing organic search results, Hitwise’s latest numbers give some further insight. Bing and Yahoo!’s success rates, meaning searches that resulted in a click, are just over 81% whereas Google sits much lower at 65.6% in December 2010 and January 2011.

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I know from my own use of search engines, and in particular Google, that I ignore paid for or sponsored ads. What do think?