Good news for publisher from Google economic report.
Google has released an economic study showing its impact across the United States.
Here’s one of the more interesting tidbits for publishers and domain owners: Google assumes that a click on an Adwords ad results in more revenue to the site owner than a click on an organic ad:
However, clicks through search results may not be as commercially valuable as ad clicks, so we want to be conservative: we estimate that search clicks are about 70 percent as valuable as ad clicks.
At first this may seem counter-intuitive. Don’t people trust organic results more? I think there are four reasons and ad click will outperform an organic click:
1. Once you click on an ad, you have identified yourself as someone with specific intent. You’re not turned off by the ad, and you click it with the intent to complete an action.
2. Ads are more targeted. When you search for a specific product, an ad is to-the-point and delivers you to a landing page specific to that product. Often times an organic result includes superfluous information and leads you to an un-targeted page.
3. Less competition. There are fewer ads than organic results. If someone decides to “shop” through the ads, there’s less clutter.
4. They’re commercially oriented. Advertisers don’t pay for ads that don’t deliver value. A lot of organic listings lead to topical content rather than a commercial page.
Tim says
Well….I know what I think when I search.
I click the ads b/c I figure if they are paying for the ad then then there is more of a chance that the advertiser is more likely to be legit, more focused, and poised better to complete my objective.
I think it is a time consideration notion for me also. Clicking around in organic results can take more time and are full of more amateur and less organized sites.
Julie says
“2. Ads are more targeted.”
This is similar to what happens with legacy Yellow Page book advertising. A person looking to have a drain cleared will choose a plumber’s ad that mentions “commercial drains cleared” specifically rather than an ad that says “all types of plumbing problems fixed”.
Of course google has an ax pushing this concept as well but I do believe it is true.
Tim says
Guess who owns a lot of ad clicks? Domainers. 🙂
steve says
Yea but they seperate out parked domains.
Duane says
Organic traffic outperforms ad clicks!
Being in the business running CPA sites, I can only say adwords does not even come close to organic traffic conversions.
I run the SEM on very tight budget and very targeted.
Organic search traffic get’s 75% more conversions than adword clicks.
I know these numbers because of experience, thousands of dollars spent on ad’s and a few hundred hours of testing and analising.
No one should be sold as a fool.
Andrew Allemann says
Duane – most organic listings are clearly not as optimized as yours.
Abe says
this statement is obviously biased. as Duane points out, which is also my case and the case of my sites, a good word of mouth, in post recommendations, beats the heck out of these clicks.
Chris Zaharias says
Duane – are you saying that the overall volume of organic conversions is 75% more than the overall volume of AdWords conversions?
Or, are you saying that – click for click – organic converts at a 75% higher rate?
Beatrice Classen says
I’m sure Google wants to maximise adwords sales, so I’d take that with a grain of salt.
While this may correct in the case of merchant sites with narrow product focus, for general news and content sites and sites that generate revenue from banner sales, there is no way adwords will outperform organic search
widi says
I think it is a time consideration notion for me also. Clicking around in organic results can take more time and are full of more amateur and less organized sites.