AdWords ads DO affect your organic rankings. Probably.

Posted by Dave CollinsGoogle Ads, SEO

There are those who believe that paying for Google AdWords ads will result in their previously invisible website shooting up the ‘regular’ rankings.

Sadly that simply isn’t the case. AdWords ads are completely separate from the organic listings.

However there is a very real possibility that ads may impact the CTR of organic listings, or, for that matter, vice-versa.

An article on search engine land details an experiment carried out by David Roth, whereby he attempted to prove that AdWords ads boost clicks to your organic listings:

So in our case I ran around the building, loudly declaring victory. I mean, what could be better than buying paid search traffic knowing that you’re driving more clicks to your organic listings? Believe me, I’m not saying that it will turn out this way in every case. I’m just here to share my story with you, and mine happens to have a very, very happy ending.

I’m not certain of his statistical accuracy, as I think far more data is required. But it’s certainly food for thought.

After all, the more we dominate Google’s results, the more clicks we’re guaranteed to generate. Simple really.

Google's organic listings

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