I hardly ever take the New York Post as a reliable news source - but occasionally, they've had scoops on some good stories (I think the MicroHoo story was one of them - but nothing ever came of it) like SEARCH & DESTROY - AUDIT COULD SIPHON AD $$ FROM GOOGLE.

"….Google's own research shows surfers look toward natural search over paid search by a ration of 4-to-1, Millo said. "

"…ISM's audits track the top 4.5 million search phrases on Google and Yahoo!, a total of 7.3 billion searches a month, to determine which companies across 50 business sectors pop up most frequently in the top three or four positions in natural search. Natural search results are based mostly on a site's traffic, relevance and how many other sites link to it.

The ISM audits, to be released in London, break down which of 50 business sectors are locked up - that is, have large chunks of natural search dominated by a handful of companies - and which are wide open.

The digital camera sector is pretty well locked up, the audit found, meaning it would be very hard to create a Web site or Internet marketing campaign that would successfully steal market share.

DPReview.com, a site with news and reviews of digital cameras, the ISM audit found, was the leader, turning up in the top three or four search results on Google and Yahoo! 73.7 percent of the time. It was purchased last month by Amazon.com, which was looking to sell more cameras.

"It's quite interesting that Amazon.com didn't look to mount an Internet marketing campaign and purchase search ads to gain market share but rather bought a company few people [had] heard of but which produced excellent natural search results," Millo noted. "

What I found interesting was which sectors would be "locked up" (ie: like "Digital Cameras") where almost nothing you could do, from an SEO perspective, could get ou much or any marketshare in Search.

So if you wanted to rank on the top of search results for Digital Cameras, based on the ISM results, you'd might as well forget it because the top results are locked up by a few sites have a lot of backlinks and are well optimized.

But if you try to use Paid Placement - you often spend a fortune and get nothing much for it according to Search Engine Land; however Search Engine Land does see value in Paid Placement whereas the New York Post article does not.

But I don't usually read the New York Post and hardly ever believe anything that is published there.