36% of searchers believe that companies at the top of the search results are leaders in their field, says an iProspect study.

iProspect's April 2006 white paper on searcher behaviour (already cited in our commentary Are you in the top 10 search results? ) yielded a number of key behavioural insights. One of these was the finding that 36% of search engine users believed that websites featured at the top of the natural search results are the top companies in that field.

The study concludes that this finding has clear implications for traditional (brand) marketers: 

"We believe that brand equity is conveyed upon companies who rank at the top of the search results in the eyes of a percentage of the search engine user population… Apparently there is still a segment of end-users who think “industry leadership” is a component of what search engines use to rank search results, and both online and traditional marketers can continue to use this perception to their advantage."