Online advertisers could be well advised to make use of a variety of search engines in their marketing campaigns.

The news comes after findings by InfoSpace revealed that 0.6 per cent of over 775,000 first-page results were the same across the four major search engines - Google, Yahoo!, Ask and Windows Live.

Vice president of online and local search Rod Diefendorf said: "Often users do not find the results they need with any single search engine."

Dr Jim Jansen from Pennsylvania State University added: "There is a perception that most search engines function similarly and deliver the same results, but that is not what these result[s] show."

The study also indicated that only 3.6 per cent of the number one ranked, non-sponsored search results were the same across those search engines tested.

Meanwhile, between 38 and 46 per cent of links on the first page of search results did not receive any clicks as they were irrelevant to users' interests.

Overall, consumers were reported to use three different search engines every month.

Last month, senior eMarketer analyst Karin von Abrams claimed search-based advertising is one of the fastest growing areas of internet marketing.