Most businesses choose to take advantage of the persuasive powers of numbers at some point, but a recent post on Google’s Inside AdWords left me less than impressed:
“Advertisers often wonder whether search ads cannibalize their organic traffic. If search ads were paused, would clicks on organic results increase and make up for the loss in paid traffic? Google statisticians recently ran over 400 studies on paused accounts to answer this question…Â
On average, the incremental ad clicks (IAC) percentage across verticals is 89%. This means that a full 89% of the traffic generated by search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused. This number was consistently high across verticals.“
My favourite quote comes at the end of the Search Ads Pause video:
“When search advertising is turned off, some advertisers assume that organic clicks might make up for many of the lost paid clicks. For most advertisers, the study shows dramatically different results.“
To describe the study as flawed is an understatement.
A single page on a website might rank well for two or three keywords in the organic results, but could target hundreds of pages in AdWords.
And most keywords will have a number of competing AdWords bids, so disabling your ads will most likely lead to your competition receiving those clicks instead.
If, hypothetically, a company’s keyword bids all had no competition, and they also ranked highly for the same keywords in the organic listings, then switching off their ads might make sense.
The whole thing is quite frankly bizarre.
The results achieved by Google AdWords speak for themselves. Why would Google resort to such cheap and flawed propaganda?
