American businesses spend close to US$100 billion each year to secure top advertising spots in search engine results – even though it’s not exactly a secret that most online shoppers scroll right past them.

In fact, organic links – results that aren’t sponsored advertisements – can receive up to 10 times as many clicks as search ads, industry data shows.

I refer to this phenomenon as “search ad avoidance,” and it’s a big problem for the multibillion-dollar industry. But it turns out that not all groups are equally averse to clicking on sponsored search results.

According to my newly published peer-reviewed research, people with conservative political views are more likely to click on sponsored search results.

Republican-leaning brands such as Black Rifle Coffee Company might want to take note.

To explore the relationship between politics and search engine behavior, I conducted several studies.

First, I examined data from more than 500,000 visitors to a nationwide retailer’s website. I analyzed the percentage of visitors from each U.S. state who arrived at the website by........

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