MarketingSherpa released a study on eye-tracking search engine results. Buried in the article was this:

Mainstream marketers, however, are only now starting to catch on. This partially explains why marketers spent $5.5 billion on paid listings in 2005 compared with just $660 million on optimization for organic listings. MarketingSherpa’s research team expects to see optimization crack $1 billion at long last in 2006.

Its no suprise then that rip-off SEO firms are flourishing, charging customers bargain prices and delivering top results for keywords no one searches for. On the other hand, this also means search engine optimizers can expect even more competition..