British consumers are slightly more likely to visit a site that offers safe shopping online after clicking on a promoted search result than their global counterparts, according to a new study from SimilarWeb.

In the UK, it was revealed that 2.33 per cent of people who arrive on e-commerce sites have got to a landing page via a PPC (pay per click) ad. Meanwhile, the average across all the countries covered in the study is 1.97 per cent, suggesting that Brits are more comfortable with the idea of being advertised to via search results.

Some nations see much higher levels of PPC engagement than others, with Brazil sitting at the top of the current charts with its 4.14 per cent click through rate. Conversely, shoppers in the US are less amenable to ads, since paid search generates just 1.84 per cent of all e-commerce site visits at the moment.

The study also assessed the different types of sites that are on offer based on the categories of products they sell, finding that PPC ads for retailers specialising in consumer electronics are less likely to earn engagement than those from e-commerce outlets selling home and garden items via safe shopping online.

Unsurprisingly, the one e-commerce retailer which dominates the paid search market in terms of keywords is Amazon. In fact, its company name alone is one of the most powerful terms in the entire e-commerce industry, meaning that shoppers are using search engines to find items on Amazon rather than searching the site directly.

Report spokesperson, Joel Zand, said that retailers needed to work harder in order to make sure that both their paid ads and organic search rankings were solid enough to win over visitors and prevent competitors from stealing any of their business.