Correlation between CPC and Organic searches?

[360interactive]

Whenever I increase my CPC amount I get an increase in both PAID clicks and organic clicks. Is this a coincidence or is Google giving increased exposure to those who spend more money with their ads?!

 

[Inbound_Consult]

It's not beyond the realms of possibility that big G would encourage spending by giving an added incentive, although they would never openly admit it. I've heard other people say similar things on other forums so maybe there is some truth to it.

 

[toastking]

Isn't it the case that site visitor numbers is a factor in organic search results?

So in theory if you get more visitors picking you over competitors, then this would organically serve to boost your ranking.

It wouldn't matter how you got the extra traffic, it would just matter that you have it (other factors would deal with the Black/White had methods behind it, but paid adverts with Google wouldn't be a problem.)

 

[360interactive]

Interesting guys, thanks for the responses. I've always noticed a correlation, but at the moment it's very obvious. I guess one factor could be people clicking on a paid result, then re-visiting using an organic result? It's hard to tell as most of my organic results show as 'not provided'.

 

[SolutionLab]

Hello 360,


This HBS paper might be of use, replacing the display ads with search ads and search ads with organic listings. It has also been turned into a working knowledge article, here, the key term being persistance modeling, an intro to which can be found here.

It's not beyond the realms of possibility that big G would encourage spending by giving an added incentive, although they would never openly admit it. I've heard other people say similar things on other forums so maybe there is some truth to it.

Do you think Google would sacrifice its greatest asset, people's trust, in exchange for a bit more AdWords spending? This article might be useful but since you're in SEO and seem serious, you might as well ask @zigojacko about it.

 

[Scceelly.com]

By increasing your cpc you will automatically gain more exposure as you will appear higher on the SERP and also your impression share will most likely increase (if your quality score is low). And increased exposure leads to increased traffic (both paid and organic) - this is really the basics of marketing. It doesnt mean that if paid traffic increased by x% than organic will increase by the same amount. Most likely not, but there is correlation.

 

[omnivore]

we have had a similar experience (our serp positions for our key terms are high and we also generally have top 3 positions for our ads too)

I have been told by others that there is a known phenomenon whereby ads and serps when seen in close proximity generate more clicks overall than the sum of both individually.

ie
ads alone = 10 clicks
serps alone = 10 clicks
ads and serps together = 25 clicks

the theory I was told is that each ads credibility to the other for the surfer

we have seen this for ourselves as after penguin certain regions (europe mainly) serps declined for us and the click and conversion rate on our ads in those regions declined also at the same time

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Whenever I increase my CPC amount I get an increase in both PAID clicks and organic clicks. Is this a coincidence or is Google giving increased exposure to those who spend more money with their ads?!

It depends on what you mean by "increase".

Google put out a paper a year or two ago where it presented stats that showed that, if you have both paid and organic listings on a search results page, you'll get more organic clicks than if you had only had your organic listing.

(I think I may have shared this on UKBF at the time - might be worth checking the archives if you want to read the report.)

But, if you mean higher organic rankings, then that's another matter. Google claim it doesn't happen. However, I've talked to people who claim their rankings go up and down significantly when they switch their PPC on and off.

I'm not convinced. (But nor am I dismissive of their observations.)

Steve

 

[omnivore]

(I think I may have shared this on UKBF at the time - might be worth checking the archives if you want to read the report.)

you know what?
I think that was me

 

[directmarketingadvice]

you know what?
I think that was me

Might have been. I have a feeling I posted something about this, it could have been on your thread. (Or there might be 2 different threads about the same thing.)

Steve

 

[360interactive]

It depends on what you mean by "increase".

Google put out a paper a year or two ago where it presented stats that showed that, if you have both paid and organic listings on a search results page, you'll get more organic clicks than if you had only had your organic listing.

(I think I may have shared this on UKBF at the time - might be worth checking the archives if you want to read the report.)

But, if you mean higher organic rankings, then that's another matter. Google claim it doesn't happen. However, I've talked to people who claim their rankings go up and down significantly when they switch their PPC on and off.

I'm not convinced. (But nor am I dismissive of their observations.)

Steve

Thanks Steve, I don't find my organic listings get higher, just more organic clicks.

 

[clickthroughkings]

I have to echo the comments from Scceelly.com & directmarketingadvice.

In our experience of marketing various businesses in many industry sectors, spending more on pay per click will result in obviously more traffic to your site (not necessarily the right traffic!), its the knock on "branding" that takes place after which means that people return to your site typing in your business name. So an increase in cpc's means that you are in a higher position and there fore getting more clicks and the branding is having more of an effect.

Unfortunately Google stopped all us search marketeers from seeing these keywords with the dreaded "not provided" in Analytics. You can however see the last 90 days worth of keyowords in Webmaster Tools and even Adwords/Analytics if you link them to the webmaster tools!

Let me know if you need a hand with any of this.

Robert