Abstract
We study consumers' click behavior on organic and sponsored links after a keyword search at an Internet search engine. Using a dataset of individual-level click activity after keyword searches from a leading search engine in Korea, we find that consumers' click activity after a keyword search is quite low and is heavily concentrated on the organic list. However, searches of less popular keywords (i.e., keywords with lower search volume) are associated with more clicks per search and a larger fraction of sponsored clicks. This indicates that, as compared to more popular keywords, less popular keywords are searched by consumers who expend more effort in their search for information and are closer to a purchase, which makes them more targetable for sponsored search advertising.