No one clicks the ads right? eh oh wrong!

According to a study done by Word Stream clicks on paid search listings beat out organic clicks by nearly a 2:1 margin for keywords with high commercial intent in the US.

Put another way, 64.6% of people click on Google Ads when they are looking to buy an item online!

Put yet another way, if you want to sell stuff to people searching online then you really want to be advertising on Google.

So why when most people say they rarely click the ads do the numbers say something very different?

Well, because for most searches people do click more often on the organic search results. Terms like “first world war” and “when is the football world cup” or “elvis presley birth date” do drive more clicks clicks via the organic search results than ads, but for terms like “best seo company dubai” or “electric hair dryer reviews” the ads get all the spoils.

High commercial intent keywords, the ones being typed by people ready to buy are the ones you want to be showing up for, unless that is you are not interested in making any moolah.

So why do more people click on the ads for commercially inclined searches?

First of all the intention of the search is to find a product or service and thus the searcher is open to commercial listings.

Secondly, for these types of searches, often the ads take up as much as 85% of the space above the fold. That’s the vast majority of visible screen space being ads when a searcher views the search engine results page. There is no wonder that most of the clicks for these commercial searches go to the sponsored listings (ads).

Thirdly, the organic results and the ads are becoming less and less distinguishable. Where as previously the preferred listing ads that regularly displayed above the main organic results were boxed inside a yellow rectangle, now the only visual differentiation is a small yellow label saying “ad.”

Still not convinced you should be advertising on Google because you are getting good enough results from SEO?

Combining SEO and Adwords PPC will compound your organic search (SEO) results. It is proven that by merely having the presence of an ad on the search engine results page in addition to an organic listing will increase the chances of clicking on your organic listing by 89%.

Now ideally you should be investing in both Adwords PPC and SEO, because when done in combination these two search marketing channels compound results. But at least if you have been dismissive of Adwords before, I hope this post has opened your eyes to how powerful those Google Ads no one clicks on can be.

Do you click on Google Ads? Please post your comments below.