Search Engine Results: Organic versus Sponsored

When you do a Google search, you will get 3 lists of sites. In the middle of the page is a list of the websites which match your search. In the right hand column there are a list of 'sponsored' sites; these are websites which have paid Google to be listed here (as indicated by the term 'sponsored links', which appears at the top of the right hand column). Also, near the top of the page there will usually be one or two more sponsored links, typically high-lighted in yellow and also titled 'sponsored links').

In other words, each Google search results in two types of websites being listed. One is the websites that Google thinks best match the search and the other is websites which have paid to be listed. The first set is known as 'organic search results' and the second as 'sponsored results'. Anyone can be in the sponsored results (all you have to do is pay to be there); the purpose of SEO is to be in the organic results.

To be listed in the sponsored results, all you need to do is invest an hour to set up a Google 'Adwords' account. Your advertisements will then appear in the sponsored results. Each time someone clicks on your advertisements, Google will charge you a fee. The amount of the fee depends mainly on where you want to be in the sponsored results (near the top is more expensive than near the bottom), the search terms for which your advertisement appears (some terms are more expensive than others) and on what limits you set when setting up your account. The actual fee can range from one cent to more than twenty dollars, but a typically fee for a moderately competitive keyword would be 20 cents each time someone clicks on your advertisement. This is known as PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, as you pay only when someone clicks on your advertisement and goes to your site.

PPC has two disadvantages compared to organic results. The first is that you have to pay. Although 20 cents may not seem much, if only one in a hundred visitors buys, you are actually paying 20 dollars per purchase. If you are selling T-shirts, it is hard to make a profit when paying this out. Google has effectively set up PPC as an auction; you bid against other advertisers and the advertisers that bid the most tend to get the best advertising positions. Due to this competitive nature, the more valuable a visitor is, the more people bid for the advertising, so in the end the cost of the advertising rises to the point where it is still profitable but not very profitable. In fact, depending on a number of factors (e.g. how good your site is at converting visitors into sales), PPC may either be a good investment or a poor investment. Making PPC cost-effective is a complex subject, which we leave to other experts to explain. We merely wish to outline the basic principles of sponsored (PPC) results.

The second disadvantage of PPC is that people going searches are increasingly aware that the sites in the sponsored listings are merely advertisements. As a result, they are far less likely to click on these listings than on the organic results. If you rank well in the organic results you will get far more visitors through the search engines than you will ever get though being in the sponsored search results.