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Pay Per Click vs Organic Search Results in the Eyes of the Consumer
by Steve Cook
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I'm a web designer and was recently in the office of a Vice President of an Austin, Texas financial institution. The subject of Google searches came up. He claimed that he would never click on a PPC (pay per click) result - only organic results.
That reminded me of a magazine article I read several years ago. The magazine had done a poll of Google search engine users to find out what results were most frequently selected by the users. The results of the poll showed that most consumers clicked on the very first ranked Google result, which is almost always a paid advertisement. Further, most users only clicked on listings that were displayed on the top fifty percent of the page, including the Pay Per Click listings in the right column.
When asked if they could tell an organic result from a Pay Per Click result, over 90% of the search engine users said they did not know the difference. The Vice President I was visiting with was responsible for the marketing department of the financial institution and had some knowledge of SEO (search engine optimization). Why he refused to click on PPC results is a mystery to me, but it's clear that the general public couldn't care less.
From a website development perspective, I believe it's vital to be listed on the top half of the first page of Google search results for your tier one search phrases, and if you have to pay to be there, so be it.
Steve Cook owns Austex Websites, a web design firm in Austin, Texas. Steve has over 25 years of marketing and sales management experience and his background includes marketing and selling web design, website development services, database solutions, software training, and web-based software applications.
As a sales and marketing director, Steve has been responsible for corporate web presence, online lead generation, SEO and PPC campaigns.
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