In a recent study, researchers took a look at Google research with regard to how paid and organic search results work in combination with each other. According to Google, eliminating all paid ads would create an 89% drop in clicks, however there is far more to this story than initially meets the eyes. For example would the results be different for a keyword that was number one in organic search results as compared to one that was on the second or lower pages?

In a quote from Google’s lead researcher David Chan, he stated “After we released the first paper, we had many questions coming back, wanting more details about incrementally and under what situations can you expect the numbers to be different?” With this in mind he set off to learn more about how the two concepts interacted with each other in a number of subtle ways. Here is what the results of his efforts found.

Generally Speaking Page One Does Not Contain Any Organic Search Results

Armed with this information, it becomes much easier to understand the eighty nine per cent concept, as the latest results demonstrate, eighty one per cent of the time search advertisements that are paid for show up without any type of organic search results, overall. At the same time no more than nine per cent of the time do organic search results appear in the top ranks. Organic search results show up in ranks 2 through 4 only five per cent of the time and in ranks below 5 at a rate of approximately four per cent.

Keep in mind that these results did not look at branded terms versus generic ones, but that the results and subsequent rank could easily be used as a proxy for this concept. Stated more simply a branded term is far more likely to rank higher than a non- branded.

Accompanying Ads Can Often Be of Benefit, Even to a #1 Ranking

One of the surprising results of the study was that even when an advertiser holds the number one rank in organic search results, half of the clicks from their ads do not get replaced with clicks on organic search results anytime that their ads do not show up.

According to Chan, “These are very surprising results, and, I think in some ways, they run counter to what people would think but the data speaks for itself.” The results of the study conclude that when the related organic search result has a rank of 2-4, eighty two per cent of the clicks are incremental. When the rank is a 5 or lower the percentage increases to ninety six per cent.

These results are generalised and in the course of his research the results varied significantly from one term to another and from one advertiser to another. Chan recommends that all advertisers do their own research. As a final thought, the study he conducted concentrated on the number of clicks rather than the conversions so there are no clear indicators as to extent the incremental click rates had on overall conversions.