Infographic: The Dynamics Between Organic and Paid Search Clicks

Google released an infographic  today entitled the Impact of Organic Rank on Ad Click Incrementality. It tells a pretty interesting story of how clicks generated by a search ad campaign are impacted by the site's ranking in Google's organic search results. While the numbers presented are averages and should be interpreted with caution, they point to an interesting trend.

Google's research shows how much of your clicks are lost when you pause your search ads. (Source: Google Research Blog)

So What?

Basically what the infographic above says is that marketers who are already on top of Google's search results are benefited significantly by the incremental impact of their paid search campaigns in terms of the number of clicks they get. Notably, as you go further down the organic search results page, the greater the impact of paid campaigns on your clicks. Why? Perhaps some people don't bother scrolling down anymore.

According to Google, for sites that are 5th or below on the search results page, 96% of ad clicks are incremental (visits to these sites are not replaced by organic clicks if the campaigns are paused). This means that these sites would stand to lose a whole lot of clicks if they don't simultaneously run their related paid campaigns .

However, this doesn't automatically mean that marketers should always keep their campaigns on. The impact on conversions should be key in determining whether or not to continue the paid campaigns. Of course, the campaigns may not be worth it if the incremental clicks you're getting from your ads aren't resulting in conversions anyway. In this case, there might be something wrong with your ads.