When I saw the image below in a ppc training blog post warning lead generation advertisers of what is to come I had to share it with my readers.
I encourage anyone who relies on organic or paid AdWords traffic to make the time to read that excellent post and subscribe to and follow @theppcblog on Twitter.
This image is for all those who still insist that Google has the best search results. I ask you to look at the image below and then answer the question below it.
Do you suppose the income from promoted listings might affect what Google chooses to display above the fold and on most of the first page?
“Are you STILL sure Google provides the best results?”
Almost all of the first page in that example is advertising. While not all searches have that many promoted listings, it is likely that many more will over time. Do you honestly believe money will not affect which results Google shows?
While the blogger who created that image was writing about lead generation, the search it shows is for san francisco dentists – not a business that most would think of when we think about lead generation.
Organic results like those affect many small businesses.
I would love to hear from my readers about every alternative search engine they’re using. Do me a huge favor and leave a comment with a link to any post you like (yours or someone else’s) about alternative search engines or link(s) to the search engines you use.
It is up to us to find the best search engines and share that information with our friends, family, co-workers, readers and followers.
Gail Gardner
thanks for sharing a great post its a good techniques of google to show a paid and organic result its depend on us which type of techniques you want to chosse and which one is best for us.
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Still there is no alternative of Google according to my opinion. Yes, they are making some mess for some search terms but still no other search engines are providing better results than Google. I have tried yahoo and Bing for a few days but I had to get back to Google. 🙁
In the long run, using Adwords to build a business is much harder than ranking organically, and when you turn it off it’s all gone. I’d stick with ranking organically and d the hard work it takes to get there.
Google is completely taking over their search results with their own products. You would think more people would use other search engines, but they don’t realize that Google doesn’t give the best results.
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Google has such a monopoly on the search engine market and at the end of the day they are a business that want to make money so they will make their webpages how they like to make the maximum amount of revenue. Organic results are always better in my opinion though, better conversion rates and some people always avoid paid results.
I would say at least for now most of the keywords are too expensive to bid on
This a an insightful post,Google, like any other business is simply trying to milk the most money out of it’s users as possible, and they will do whatever it takes to make this happen.
Hi Nathan,
If that was the real goal of Google I would not mind it nearly as much as I do. Have you seen my post with all the Google is Evil Evidence?
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Yes google does skew it’s results, but so what? It’s their business. They can show whatever listings they please. I think people need to move away from the perception, google owes me something….it doesn’t. If you want to grow your business, find alternatives to google if you are not happy!
Google has intentionally mislead the public into believing they provide the best results through their influence over major media. They now have a monopoly over both paid and free search and control what the masses see or don’t see. If you don’t see that as dangerous then you’re just them – corrupt to the core.
I have done nothing but work on finding alternatives to the traffic Google first gave and then took away and there is NO other source that is as targeted or as effective as search which means users have handed Google the power to decide which businesses survive and which ones to crush.
I agree that all Internet users and businesses need to find alternatives to Google because Google is truly evil. They are being investigated for unfair competition and there are many posts now about Google’s biased results.
You can watch excerpts of the Google Senate anti-trust hearings where evidence was presented proving that Google favors their own results over all others.
Right now you are defending them, but when your turn comes – and believe me it will – and Google favors big brands over you – and you lose more and more of your traffic because of it like the many small businesses that have already lost 35-50+% of theirs – then you may then change your mind.
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PPC is a great option if you’re Google. It originally was an excellent option for small businesses when they first offered it, but with each passing year it becomes less beneficial and more dangerous. See my posts about AdWords here:
PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING:
How Not to Lose Your Shirt on PPC Advertising
Step-by-step Method for Evaluating Your AdWords Account – what settings to use and why
growmap would love you to read ..Google Personalized Search Results: Blinkers On? How to Remove Them by Getting UNPersonalized.
Great post! getting organics is very importanb.
I’ve seen this image before also.In the book “Art of SEO” authors have given a similar kind of image .But they also explained why organic SEO is better than paid listing.Many studies have shown that majority of searchers can differentiate between the paid listing and organic listing.It simply means that SEO is important now also and the same will be the case in near future.And the answer to your question is that we must not forget the purpose of Google.They have only one goal in mind to make rules ,bend rules when ever it suites them and make as much money as possible for themselves.Recent Panda update has proved this Google has punished almost all the sites which were in one way or another way a competitor to their information providing business and as dust settled most people realized that this update is going to serve only one purpose”Google will be more profitable than before”.
i need to disapprove Malcolm, google adwords isn’t influencing SERP in any ways.. and as for your question, i still find google to be the best search engine yet..
Hi Bogdan,
I have only one question for you. How do you KNOW that? Because Google says so? Did you TEST to PROVE that was true or are you just one of those people who lets Google and the major media tell you what to think?
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Google has refined the way they place results many times this year already. They are heavily supporting user experience more than ever before so spam blogs are history!
That is a ridiculous comment. They are ranking scraped content over the original version and their results are still filled with MFA (made for AdSense) sites full of spun content and ads. It is sad that so many people just believe whatever they hear instead of actually using their minds evaluate for the truth.
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I don’t think it’s a case of whether Google is the best, it’s a case of how best to use it. 65% of searches are on Google, so just because it’s pushing it’s own stuff, you still have to deal with it.
Yes, they definitely favor their own stuff – like this post and the one I did on Google Panda are both PR4 even though they’ve dropped the PR for my home page and for many internal pages.
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Yeah, it has been clear that delivering the best search results has not been Google’s top priority anymore, it’s all about money. The panda update made that even more clear.
Governments start to catch on as well.
I read a news story (can’t remember where) that said that the German government is asking everybody in government to delete their facebook account to give the right example. Because fb doesn’t handle the privacy of their users well.
Of course for now this wont change anything, but at least it’s a start.
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Hi Danny,
Most governments are so corrupted by the influence of big money that they won’t be doing anything about any monopoly. The one thing we CAN do is support small businesses, create local collaborations of bloggers, and support REAL local grassroots movements (search Twitter for #BuyLocal #ShopLocal #EatLocal and similar hashtags).
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GrowMap, check out my comment on your post here: https://www.growmap.com/farmer-update-google-competitors/comment-page-3/#comment-69089
If I were Google I would definitely be trying to get as many ppc ads on a page as possible, so I can make more money. It makes me absolutely SICK to see the incredibly poor queries that uneducated ppc advertisers pay clicks for. The beauty of AdWords for Google is that it really requires education to efficiently run. Somebody who simply throws a bunch of money at general, broad matched keywords will get very few relevant clicks to their site. At some levels I feel like broad match should be illegal. The fact of the matter is, an uneducated user can blow away thousands of dollars and not get one relevant click to your site, because they thought that a broad matched term works like an exact match term. There are probably millions of users like this, and Google is taking full advantage of this, and this must be the major driver of their insane profits….deception.
And search query reports??? Thanks, but not enough info! Google will only show you queries that triggered ads to show and got clicked…I want to see ALL of the queries that my ad was triggered for, this way I can ensurer my ads are not shown to any irrelevant user!
I totally agree Ciro. Anyone who thinks AdWords is easy has no clue what they’re doing and with every update they make it more confusing and harder to control how they’re spending your money.
I made a great living managing pay per click accounts for very small businesses for over five years – mostly AdWords accounts. I quit cold turkey because I knew I could not protect them from what Google is doing.
Expanded broad match is just the tip of the iceberg. Distribution fraud is an even bigger problem and very few agencies or individuals offering AdWords management ever even NOTICE it much less try to protect their clients from what amounts to outright theft.
When I had to add negative embedded keywords to keep Google from showing ads where they never should be shown it was obvious it was time for me to find other ways to benefit small businesses.
I have several very good posts on my Best of GrowMap page on how not to take too much of a bath on ppc but being completely safe is probably not even possible.
PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING:
How Not to Lose Your Shirt on PPC Advertising
My Step-by-step Method for Evaluating Your AdWords Account – what settings to use and why
The best bet for large spenders would be to have a system with an automated bid manager that instantly stops spending when distribution fraud is occurring. The only person I know to be sharp enough to create a solution like that offhand that is Marty Weintraub who owns the AimClear Search Engine Marketing Services agency.
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Google, like any other business is simply trying to milk the most money out of it’s users as possible, and they will do whatever it takes to make this happen. What worries me most is that people are beginning to rely too much on google to tell them what is the “best.” The fact of the matter is, a skilled seo can take a terrible dentist and make them show up #1 for “best dentist san francisco.” How much trust do you put on google’s listings? It seems that the world is relying too much on computer algorithms to tell them what’s the best for them when in fact they should be focused on figuring out what is best using their own judgements. This is a scary trend that I am finding more and more often.
Hi Ciro,
If that was the only thing Google wanted to do they wouldn’t be such a big concern. We need to understand that Google IS Evil and they are very dangerous to our freedom and privacy.
They would make more money the way AdWords originally worked by letting small businesses use it to generate income. They broke that on purpose. Google favors favor big brands and drives small businesses away – again, on purpose.
You are absolutely correct that people ARE relying way too much on what Google wants them to see instead of using some common sense and wisdom to find the truth and the best businesses.
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I found that if a site is an AdWords campaign it is also higher in search results of the SERP. As soon as the site stops adwords campaign , the site goes down for some positions in the organic.
All that in my experience.
The picture depicts an extreme example. Geographical searches tend to pop up with the map listings as well as “directions to” in the top ads. If you do have a business in that area, it is easy to pop in your information for google maps and ta-da, you’re now towards the top of the listing.
It is an excellent post, which discusses about the chances of hardwork and dedication to reach on page 1 by bloggars for certain keywords. It is really google’s way of treating the paid one vs the rest. Anyway we will have to think about other alternate serach engines also.
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Though Google shows Advertisement and paid ads at the top of the Serps but the Top results are fined and relevant.Instead Its trying new means to make search more effective….The visitors from this search engine are quality ones and genuine.
well what is new? Google has been leaning towards this aspect for a very long time now……arent they also leaning towards the brands…………irrespective of how well their site is coded…..
Excellent portrayal!!
I have been saying this for years.
My old boss has the Google fridge, paid well over $10 mil over 5 years for advertising, and he is ranked beautifully…organically, as well.
Google are a bunch of sinister demonic entities sucking off the life of all of us…beware the wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Who knows? Google will charge website owners just to be included in their index. Nothing is impossible in the online world that revolves around money.
It is really surprising for me to see the first page is almost fully complete with local listing and ads and we bloggars do hard work on increasing SERP, however I still feel that google is slightly better than other search engines, as I am not able to put my keywords there on page 1 even after hardwork.
Interesting screen shot but an exception to have so many ads above the fold. Google says that Adwords, etc., have no affect on organic listings and I believe them. And I always click on an organic result – hardly ever on ads. People are quite savvy about this on Google now, I believe.
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Even though Google reigns supreme and clutters their pages does not mean we can’t use the organic results and place high on other search engines like Bing and Yahoo. Quite a few of my articles place really high on those two and I find they convert just as good or better than Google.
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People seem willing to put up with different types of results when it comes to searching for businesses or local items. Really though, people should want quality most of all. Just because nearby dentists have spent to advertise, does not mean that there are not other dentists closer by to the searcher, but they are further down the page in the organic results.
Even the Google organic results can be skewed by the use of Adsense. Supposedly Adsense on your site doesn’t give you a boost in the rankings but who really knows for sure because who benefits from sending visitors to an Adsense site?
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It’s true, small businesses may be affected by this, but keep in mind: those small businesses don’t pay a thing to be there. They don’t invest, they just rely on Google to make sales for them.
In the end, if a huge company sells the same products as a small company, the smaller one has no excuse to not afford the ads. Because if the huge one makes profit with those ads, the same will happen to the small company. It just takes some quick investments with fast returns.
I’ve never had success on blogs I’ve created with the PPC model. Ultimately do to it right, to have healthy sustainable traffic you have to put the leg work in. If you cut corners and pay for the traffic it just don’t provide the ultimate benefits. Especially on Google for some reason. Actually Facebook advertisements have worked better for me in comparison.
Seems to me you have very good reasons to assure the Google believers in the fact that Google does not provide always the best results. Sure, money affects the results that Google is showing. But, with money it is always like that….and neither Google is immune to it.
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I agree with you John…And what you have exposed here is really fodder for thought. And I must say I too use Google, you can say more out of habit …but now I wish that it has more competition from the other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, etc. A single dominant player is not always a good option.
It is not all paid advertising. Google Places is more the less those that have taken the time to setup an account. I know for a few of my clients, I have set the up with a listing, however have paid nothing to be in there. They still rank you in those listing by location and their pagerank algorithm.
It does really show you why you should be using either PPC or Places. I do know many that ignore any paid ads…such as myself. I read right past the paid ads and right on to the organic ads.
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I agree. It is pretty well-established that organic listings do generally get a better click-through, due to a perception that the organic listings are “earned”.
I will generally scroll past all the paid ads, like yourself. The only time I will click on a paid ad is if the ad is especially compelling or original, or if I am no longer in a researching frame-of-mind, and know what I want and want to buy it, basically straight away.
It’s easy to see how paid ads can be very effective for this reason, when they are done right, in fact that is probably something I should be learning, rather than visiting blogs!
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This is surprising and annoying. Maybe this is just an error on Google’s end. They might fix it.
I have mixed feelings about this. The picture is shocking when you think about it. Really very little is above the fold. Thinking that ALL searches could carry that amount of ads in the future is disheartening. (as one who rarely uses PPC)
But there is also a certain amount of blindness to people who are savvy, which is becoming more and more of us.
I know, personally, I look right past ads on search results and go right to the top SERP. I think many people do this and the more they pile the ads on the more people will skip over them entirely.
Of course what I would really like to see is some heat map results from Google about peoples clicking habits on these heavy ads pages.
Regardless, a very interesting topic that makes you think….
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Wow! That graphic really hit me.
I knew that paid search & local results are taking up a lot of space on google SERPS but I didn’t realize how much until now. I’ve tended to tune out the advertising and skip to the first organic results, but it looks like it’s going to be getting harder to do.
I think I’m going to have to improve my PPC campaign efforts going forward.
I have just read a blog post about 7 search tools. I commented and said that nothing can beat Google. I do think it is so powerful because it provides accurate results. The above image proves otherwise. But I think Google isn’t perfect after all. And it is better compared with other search engines. I have never fined a more accurate one in my experience.
This is the link to the post I’ve just read:
http://genuineseo.net/search-the-web/
Thanks for sharing and have a great day!
Mouh
🙂
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I guess for long-term trust google should not make money influence the result. But I doubt it a little. For example, I used to check case-mate.com, I searched with keyword iPhone 4 cases , case-mate.com shows on the first page on the organic result as well as the google ad side on the right. If case-mate.com can result on the first page of organic result. It’s not necessary for case-mate to buy this keyword from Google. So…
Any alternative search engine fails in delivering really relevant results because google has the best mix of spidering new pages and ranking algorithm.
Great points Gail. This is a huge issue at the local level. The chances of finding a true organic result for a local search (“city” plus “keyword”) above the fold is growing slimmer and slimmer by the day.
For all intents and purposes local search on Google is pay to play.
I like http://duckduckgo.com/ because they don’t track your search history in any way. Here’s an illustrated guide on their privacy vs Google’s.
http://donttrack.us/
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There has been studies about Organic vs Paid sites in Google SERP by Ryan Diess called the Perpetual Traffic Formula.. In that study it shows that only very few(1-2%) viewers look at paid sites, while organic sites has the most attention for viewers which has 41-45% giving their attention to it.
So in answer to your question. I don’t believe that money will affect the results Google shows?
I read you post at twitter. It’s really interesting.
Well I prefer organic listing rather than paid listing. Because it provides following benefits.
-No cost
-Get more traffic
-Get visitors with a higher education
-Longer lasting rank and traffic
These are the core reasons for me for preferring organic listings.
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I agree with you John. I tried out Google’s Adwords $100 credit program and I was getting some traffic but it wasn’t better than the organic traffic. I feel like when webmasters focus on writing great content and bring in organic traffic through that they’re much better off than paying for PPC campaigns. It’s more traffic, it’s free, and it’s super long lasting! I have blog posts that I wrote over a year ago that are still ranking in the first and second place in organic results!
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I must say that I use Google myself all the time, out of habit. But I’m extremely unhappy with the dominance they have in the search world. I would be so happy if there was a more balanced split with Yahoo, Bing and so on.
I hope the other guys will catch up a bit in the future. It is never well for consumers to have such dominant player on the supply side…
Susane