Is ppc becoming more influential than organic search with consumers?

[ahw]

Simply put, are consumers clicking on ppc in lieu of organic search. In the past, people use to say that ppc accounted between 30-40% of traffic with organic accounting for majority of activity. My question is whether those numbers have changed, and if so, where are we now?

A friend in Boston in does SEO, remarked that many of her 'sophisticated' friends didn't know the difference between ppc and organic.  Seems odd, but with the move to place ppc results  from the right hand sidebar to the top left hand column, certainly gives it more presence and makes the separation between ppc vs. organic less distinct.

I certainly understand the value of doing both, but depending on the answer, it begs the question... is the expense of moving up a position or two in organic worth the effort and monies, if ppc is becoming the dominant raffic tdriver?

Anybody have any recent statistics on ppc vs. organic?

Thanks.

[Saijo.George]

Its like comparing Apples to Mangoes really . If you are having client who seems to be confused  .. you should educate them about what each of them offers.

With organic you need to invest time and effort and the results will take time .. With PPC  you get value based on the Money you put it ( that is not to say there is no time / effort put in to it ) and can be used for quick wins.

[bronxpad]

Bing actually has an off white color for the ppc ads versus a white color for organic which makes them blend in together. This is great for the ads because it can cause confusion.  So the margin is closer here.

Google still differentiates the two enough that most people notice the difference. People still favor organic results unless they are looking for a brand that is in the ppc section.

Note: It is great to be both on the ppc ad and organic results. You have greater branding potential and people will most often click the organic result vs the ad.

[David_ODonnell]

It may not be that it's becoming more influential, it may be that ppc is taking up more screen real estate and pushing organic listings further down the page.

See: http://www.seobook.com/paid-inclusion

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[ahw]

Thanks for your response. We've invested many years in SEO successfully. One interesting change over the past year is that the traffic has dropped for some KW phrases without any change in rankings in Google. In some cases, these are terms sitting at #1 or #2. I think the demarcation between PPC and organic is becoming harder to distinguish and given the naivete of many consumers... many assume the listings are one and the same. If I'm right, it means that a higher percentage of searches are pulling from sponsored links than organic compared to the past. Is there any data or research to negative or support this assumption? Thanks. Alan

[Saijo.George]

I have no data to draw the conclusion from but I get how more users might click on PPC especially the ones on top of the SERPs . Would be interesting to see if anyone has some stats on these.

[ahw]

Thanks Saijo. I somewhat agree. The distinction between organic and ppc, now that ppc has moved to the top left side from the olden days of just being on the right hand sidebar... blurs the differences. Thanks.

[ahw]

Thanks Joel. I have a laptop and at times, the distinction between google adwords and organic seems faint. Nevertheless... I think you're right. To the unsophisticated, not sure they make note of the differences, when they don't know there's a difference in results. I agree... there's good synergy when you can get ppc and organic working...as they say in real estate...location, location, location... when you see those results repeatedly on the same page... it has impact. Thanks.