Here are some interesting stats about the state of search engines and organic search vs paid search. Some compelling data for any marketer. This article first appeared on Search Engine Journal.

SEO

1. Content marketing rocks. Marketing Sherpa reports distribution lead to a 2,000% increase in blog traffic and a 40% increase in revenue.
2. 70% of the links search users click on are organic.
3. 70-80% of users ignore the paid ads, focusing on the organic results.
4. 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.
5. GroupM states “when consumers were exposed to both search and social media influenced by a brand that overall search CTR went up by 94 percent.”
6. Search and e-mail are the top two internet activities.
7. Companies that blog have 434% more indexed pages. And companies with more indexed pages get far more leads.
8. Inbound leads cost 61% lower than outbound leads. An example of an inbound lead might be from search engine optimization. An outbound lead might be from a cold call.
9. 81% of businesses consider their blogs to be an important asset to their businesses.
10. A study by Outbrain shows that search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%
11. SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate.
12. For Google, a study from Slingshot SEO shows 18% of organic clicks go to the #1 position, 10% of organic clicks go to the #2 position, and 7% of organic clicks go to the #3 position.
13. In that same study, tests for Bing show the following: 9.7% of organic clicks go to #1, 5.5% of organic clicks go to #2, and 2.7% of organic clicks go to #3.
14. 79% of search engine users say they always/frequently click on the natural search results. In contrast, 80% of search engine users say they occasionally/rarely/never click on the sponsored search results. Here’s a look at what the natural (blue) and sponsored search results (red) look like:

Search

1. Google owns 65-70% of the search engine market share.
2. 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
3. MarketingCharts reports that over 39% of customers come from search
4. The search engine industry is estimated to be worth more than $16 billion.
5. There are over 100 billion global searches being conducted each month.
6. 88.1% of US internet users ages 14+ will browse or research products online in 2012.
7. Search directly drove 25% of all online U.s. device purchases in 2010.
8. 82.6% of internet users use search.

Mobile

• Mobile internet users will reach 113.9 million in 2012, up from 97.3 million in 2011.
• Mobile shoppers will reach 72.8 million in 2012

References:

• Google
• Hubspot
• eConsultancy
• MarketingSherpa
• SEMPO
• Slingshot SEO