Companies have often wondered whether search ads also known as PPC deter their organic traffic. They wonder if pausing their search ads would increase clicks on organic results, and make up for the loss in paid traffic? Google have also questioned the effect of paused search ads on organic traffic, thus they recently decided to conduct an experiment on such matters.
Google called the experiment “Search Ads Pause Studies.” They compiled a group of statisticians and researchers to observe organic click volume absence of 446 search ads. Indirect navigation to the advertiser site was not considered. To make comparison across multiple studies easier, they express the incremental clicks as a percentage of change in paid clicks. For example, an advertiser spends $1,000 a month on PPC and receives 400 organic and 300 paid clicks in period one. In period two they cut their ad spending to zero and find 500 organic clicks a month and 0 paid clicks. Their percentage of change will be 66.7% from the change of total clicks over change of paid clicks (700-500)/(300-0). The experiment was conducted from October, 2011 to March 2011. The analysis was made for four countries: United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany.
The final percentage of change of the experiment was 89%. This means that 89% of the traffic generated by search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused. The number was consistently high across verticals. Even if you conduct your own experiment on your company and you find that the percentage is low, it does not mean you should pause your search ads because there are many other factors to evaluate such as conversion rates and conversion revenue. From the results of this experiment, we suggest giving a second thought on pausing your PPC. In addition, if you feel you do not get enough organic results, then try changing up your SEO campaign.
For more information on the study, it can be found here.
Helen Leao
