I recently came across a blog post showing the percentage of screen space taken up by organic search for different types of Google searches. The percentages seem surprisingly low, especially given how Google is still best known for its organic search. After looking closer into the results, however, I don't really agree with the author that they are killing off organic search.
The standard desktop organic search area sounds bad at 13%, but really all that space on the right was a waste anyway. Now that Internet speeds are fast enough that they can load the map quickly, I'm glad they show us that instead of more ads. I'm not really complaining about them running local and organic search for me at the same time as long as it is fast.
As for the local example in the blog post, I think the large banner row at the top taking up 30% of the screen can count as organic depending on the source of the results. As long as they are not ads, it can be a more effective way to present results such as restaurant lists with cuisines, price levels, and ratings instead of just a link to the restaurant's site, if they even have one.
Finally, I should note that the author had a 13" screen, which is basically the minimum for non-mobile devices these days. So most of us see a lot more organic results without scrolling than presented here, though I am sure it will keep decreasing.
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