Why run a search ad when your brand appears in the organic results? It's an important question for many advertisers. Looking for an answer, we ran a huge experiment in 2011, pausing search ads on 400 accounts in four countries. The results were dramatic. A full 89% of visits to an advertiser's site from search ads were incremental to clicks on organic results. That means the visits would not have occurred without the ad campaigns. It was surprising, even to us. Learn more in this whitepaper.
Think search ads aren't necessary when organic presence is high? Think again. Google observed what happened to organic clicks when paid search ads were paused in over 400 accounts across four countries. Using a statistical model to estimate the incremental clicks attributable to search ads for each advertiser, we found:
- On average, 89% of paid traffic to an advertiser's site is lost and not recovered by organic clicks
