As of this post, I have 11 years of SEO work under my belt and it’s hard to believe that some of the same myths around organic search still come up.

In my first SEO Misconceptions blog from a few years back, I discussed why getting the first position in the organic rankings may not be as strategic of a statement as you think. Even more so with the recent Google algorithm updates around featured snippets!

In this post, my aim is to put one of the most pervasive SEO misconceptions that paid search advertising has a direct impact on organic results to bed. As this is a nuanced discussion I’ve split the findings below to address the two primary points of discussion and we’ll tackle them each in the sections below.

Claim #1: Direct Impacts of Paid Search Ads on Organic Search Rankings

What I was able to find - and my network of SEO peers reinforced the notion - that there is absolutely not a direct impact of paid search on organic search rankings. The first 75 seconds of the video linked to below states this in a very concise and non-technical way. 

Some highlights:

• Like other marketing tactics if a searcher has been previously exposed to a brand the familiarity will have a slight positive impact. 

• If a person clicks on an ad and experiences compelling content and shares the content or links to it with their own content you could see a lift in your organic rankings because of the sharing, engagement, and links back to your content, not because of a click on the ad.

In this second video, from 2014, Google and their head webmaster calls buying ads to improve rankings “a myth” and it is the first myth that he brings up when asked about SEO myths. Google hasn’t refuted this statement since then (watch the first two minutes or so). 

Some highlights:

• Neither buying nor abstaining, from paid search ads, has a (direct) impact on your organic rankings.

• Google’s primary goal for search results is to show relevant content to make happy users so the users continue to use the search engine.

• Leveraging only short term tactics and not focusing on providing a compelling experience to your users with your content will only work during those short campaign periods. This may put you in opposition to the algorithms and impact your ability to rank.

The bulk of my discontent comes from claims around a direct impact because it sets expectations in our non-technical marketing and business leaders that, as SEOs, we won’t be able to meet. Nor will we be able to show any data from our tools to support any of their claims that were made in the first place.

Claim #2: Indirect Impacts of Paid Search Ads on Organic Search Ranking

While there is not a direct impact on organic search rankings from paid search advertising, there are various ways that search ads have an indirect, or secondary and tertiary, impact on search results. These impacts make up the bulk of the research on these claims that I’ve been able to find and there is a history of research on this topic over the last decade.

The Moz video from above also discusses the secondary impacts and is a great overview of the topic. Some of the top ways that ads can have a secondary effect include (from the video):

• Searchers who see an ad may be more likely to click an organic listing

• Searchers who’ve been previously exposed to a site or brand via ads may be more likely to click, engage, and convert

• Paid search results can strongly impact organic click-through rates, but only in certain queries

In terms of people being more likely to click an organic result because they saw a paid search ad, here’s a link to one of the first (to my knowledge) academic research papers on the topic from 2010 by Cornell University. The paper discusses the research that looked into how similar text between a paid search ad and an organic listing has to be in order to facilitate a positive effect on the searchers’ click-through rate.

What the researchers found, reinforces the day-to-day experience of any SEO, that the primary impact on click-through rates is based on the intent behind the searcher’s query. Paid search ads performed better during the searches that facilitated a commercial intent. For top-level queries based around the searcher’s informational needs, organic results often performed better because the ad copy tends to be duplicative of the organic result and is unable to be as closely aligned as ads targeting a commercial intent.

This research is not all that surprising for those of us who have worked with landing page quality scores and seeing the direct impact of optimizing those pages on the cost-per-click and cost-per-acquisition metrics.

Additionally, the idea that paid search results can strongly impact organic click-through rates, but only in certain queries is further reinforced by the findings of this 2014 paper doing in collaboration between Columbia University and the American Marketing Association. The authors found:

[C]onsumers’ click activity after a keyword search is low and heavily concentrated on the organic list. However, searches of less popular keywords (i.e. keywords with lower search volume) are associated with more clicks per search and a larger fraction of sponsored clicks. This indicates that, compared with more popular keywords, consumers who search for less popular keywords expend more effort in their search for information and are closer to a purchase, which makes them more targetable for sponsored search advertising. 

This finding should ring true for anyone familiar with Clay Christensen’s Jobs to be Done idea because the searchers already have something highly specific in mind or they are looking to accomplish a task. This should also resonate with anyone that’s taken the time to map their customer journey’s from awareness through purchase and support. The further down the path the customer is the more specific their searches become.

Conclusion

My journey through the research around the claims of paid search ads on organic results just reinforces in my mind the importance of not being myopically focused on one tactic, but rather looking at the whole picture. 

Taking the time to know your customer and their behaviors through the customer journey will make the content and tactics obvious. The hard part is removing our desire as marketers to only speak about our products, but rather meet our customers where they are and helping them accomplish the task they have set out to do.

Below are three additional research resources to look through if you’re interested:

• University of Houston - This is a dissertation by a Ph.D. candidate in 2017 and contains two essays that not only looks into the effects of click-through rates on organic and paid listings but also how the results differ between branded and unbranded search terms across device type SERPs ( mobile vs tablet vs desktop search engine results pages)

• Google Research Infographic (2012) - Google looked into the incrementally of ad clicks when an organic search result is present in the top 5 positions. Google’s own findings here support the arguments in the other research papers for ads being a substitute for organic rankings, thus having slight cannibalization of organic performance. Of course, Google is in the business of selling ads…

• Search Engine Journal - Ask An SEO - The article title at the end of the URL string tells it all: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-adwords-wont-help-organic-search-rankings/196055/#close