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- 17 July, 2012 -
- Google, Google Adwords -
- Tags : US
- 7 Comments
One of the big questions that I hear often at work is: Does anyone click on paid ads? As a digital marketing who buys the ads, there is no doubt that they do and our reporting proves that people not only click the ads but they also convert. Wordstream did some research and put together this amazing infographic regarding how pay per click ads are taking over Google’s search engine results page. The stat that really stood out is:
Clicks on paid search listings beat out organic clicks by nearly a 2:1 margin for keywords with high commercial intent in the US.
[...] Paid Search Clicks vs Organic Clicks In Google, Justin Davy [...]
[...] Paid Search Clicks vs Organic Clicks In Google, Justin Davy [...]
Looks to me like this infographic was produced by a company quite keen to push PPC as the preferred search channel! And there’s even a nice plug for the PPC analsis product at the end!
The whole thing is full of sweeping generalisations, a lack of accuracy and relevance in various points, and a complete lack of clarity on the data. Accompanied by a complete lack of understanding of what SEO is and a continued re-iteration and suggestion that SEO is spam.
Hey Matt
While the company who produced this does offer products and services in the PPC space, there is no denying the valid points that they made. Google as well as others are using more of their search results page real estate to include paid advertising than ever before. Yesterday during Yahoo’s earnings call, it was stated that Yahoo search page views are down 13% but revenue is up 4%. With Google and others pushing down organic results, something must be done to bridge the gap. This infographic in my opinion did a great job of highlighting how PPC is an effective way to do just that.
I can definitely testify to the huge shift from SEO to PPC dominance. I work at an online gifting business (highly commercial intent terms) and we see click through rates of 25% on a top position paid ad, on the same SERP we rank #1 organic and receive a 8% CTR (based on Webmaster Tools).
As soon as Google moved the Line 1 of the ad into the headline, that was the signal that PPC is now the bigger player on commercial intent terms.
The funny thing is – PPC is the best form of combating web spam. You can fake links but you can’t fake cash.
To be able to afford PPC, you need to be a decent company that delivers are good user experience and converts people. Without it, you can’t sustain.
Great points Joel. SEO is still very much alive and always will be, but you just can’t ignore the importance of a good PPC strategy as well. We work closely with our SEO team here to ensure that we own as much of the search results inventory possible. You definitely need a good mix of both.
As a consumer, I used to never click on the paid ads b8ut lately I see far more relevance in them. Just yesterday I seacrhed for a dell 1520 laptop screen and came up with a local place that had an amazingly good deal for parts and labor. Where, IMO, SEO has failed is the billions of spamitizments that are sent out en masse that promise to hook people up with seo optimization. Or the ones that look like a bill for your domain that are actually for seo companies. The SEO community needs to do a better job of policing itself if it wants to succeed and survive. I find searches on google/msn/yahoo far too often that yeild results that have nothing to do whatsoever with the keywords I looked for. And that, my friends, makes me far less interested in the search results and much more interested in the ads. You can bet that millions of others feel that way too. That may result in an overhaul of how search engines work, which in turn would mean a lot of SEO people would be out of work or switching tactics quick.
Again, this is just my opinion and experience.
tc