European search engine marketing is set to enjoy a boom in 2005, a new report claims.

New research from analyst Forrester predicts that the SEM market will grow by 65 per cent this year, compared to 2004, generating 1.4 billion euros of spending.

The company estimates that by 2010, European marketers will spend almost three billion euros on search marketing, up from 856 million euros in 2004.

In the UK, the largest online ad market in Europe, search marketing, will grow to over €1 billion in 2010, boosted by marketers in travel, finance, auto, and retail.

Forrester predicts that small to medium sized enterprises are now also set to include search marketing as part of their promotions strategy.


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Companies purchasing sponsored search listings saw prices decrease by around two per cent in February 2005.

Price declined three per cent from December 2004 to January 2005 and two per cent between January and February this year.
more...The Optimiser Newsletter - 25 March 2005

At an annual gathering of its most important advertisers last week, MSN officially announced during it will enter the paid search arena with a full-blown self-service paid listing program similar to those run by Yahoo! and Google. The program will be tested in France and Singapore within the next six months. A date for a worldwide rollout hasn't been set.

more...MSN's New Paid Listings Program

A new study has added tangible evidence to the widely held view that top-ranking search results get the most attention from users, and that lower-ranking results are all but invisible to most people.

The joint study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools examined the eye movements of users viewing Google search result pages.

The study found that most viewers looked at results in an "F" shaped scan pattern, with the eye travelling vertically along the far left side of the results looking for visual cues (relevant words, brands, etc) and then scanning to the right, as if something caught the participant's attention.

More here A New F-Word for Google Search Results

Google is the most popular search engine in the UK, enjoying a larger share of the market than its US division, according to new data.
The report, from Web monitoring firm Hitwise, found google.co.uk topping the list in the UK in terms of both market share of visits (48%) and volume of searches (63.7%).
The figures put Google UK ahead of its US parent

more here Netimperative - Google more popular in UK than US