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The results came from online marketing studies done back in Fall of last year. They were based on surveys from a 1,000 sites using the urchin (tracking) software, and presented via convertlinks.com.

It’s often about purpose, marketplace specifics, goals, how and what asked when studies like these are done.

Another source for this type of information is the MarketingSherpa website.

They performed a survey on paid vs. natural conversion metrics back in August 2006, using a different methodology, and pulled via invitations from its reader lists.

Their reports show different numbers, and yield a closer (+/-) proximity to paid search, depending on campaign goals. (www.sherpastore.com).

What have your own tests shown?

Personally I would have thought to sell SEO as a concept you would need to sell search engines as marketshare of interest use, and therefore show something of their dominance in terms of anchoring the user experience of the web.

But that’s just my opinionated 2c - the UK still doesn’t “get” the net very much, let alone SEO.

I haven’t conducted any tests because I’m a writer, not a practitioner. However, I had the MarketingSherpa stats in mind, which show organic and paid conversions neck and neck (3.92% natural and 4.19% paid). But I suppose wide variations can be due to the different methodologies used in various studies. I liked the stats you quoted better.