The phrase natural traffic when used in my content, means hits to a particular web site or blog that don’t come from advertising or sponsored links.

For example, when a user makes a query on a search engine they are given a list of results. Depending on the search engine used, there are basically two types of search results. Natural results and sponsored results.

Natural Results
Search results of web pages according to their relevant content (position 1 being the web page most likely to hold the information the user is looking for). On the Google, MSN, or Yahoo! search engines these would be the results on the left side of the page.

Sponsored Results
Sponsored results (or sponsored links) are simply advertisements. They are generally placed at the top, on the right, or on the bottom of the results page. These positions are usually placed in order of who bids the highest. Whoever is listed in the #1 position in the sponsored search results is paying the most per click. This is also known as pay-per-click, or pay-per-click advertising.

So usually when I use the phrase “natural traffic”, I’m referring to web traffic to a particular web site or blog, that does not cost any money. Traffic from search engine results on the left hand side of the Yahoo!, Google, or Yahoo! search engines.

Keep in mind that there are many different search engines on the Internet, and some may list their natural results and sponsored results in different page positions.

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Tags: free traffic, natural traffic, organic traffic

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 at 9:34 pm and is filed under Definitions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.