Comments on: Would You Buy the Cow?

By: » PPC + Organic? That’s A Good Question! Pay Per Click Journal - Pay Per Click Advertising Blog

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:44:52 +0000

[...] Grok asks, Would you pay to achieve high PPC rankings if you already rank well organically? Good question. [...]

By: Rummy

Rummy — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:50:19 +0000

You’re absolutely right Chris. I have noticed this development too and I think PPC ads will get far more clicks in the future in comparison to current ratios. Consumers have noticed an increase in quality of the ads and will therefore click more ads.

By: Chris G

Chris G — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:17:48 +0000

Given the above, isn’t it remarkable that just a few years ago sponsored ads were considered by the average surfing Joe to be a bad thing? People were trying to identify which listings were sponsored so they could NOT click on them.

Now, for some market segments apparently, there are whole groups of visitors who click ONLY on the sponsored listings.

This business is fun because things are always changing, including the all-important end user behaviors. Never depend on the way it is now!

By: mike h

mike h — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:05:25 +0000

I would buy the cow and keep the natural results if possible. I do this now and find that lots of people just like to click on the sponsored results.

By: Arthur Freydin

Arthur Freydin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:31:26 +0000

Forget brand awareness.

I ran a month-long test about 2 years ago for a group of related terms that showed up between 1 and 3rd positions in organic results. The same terms also had PPC results in the same positions. For one month, I paused bidding on those terms. The results of the test were conclusive: upon shutting off the paid terms, I saw no change in organic click-throughs on those same terms. That means that by shutting off the paid terms, I was loosing incremental sales. Once I turned the paid terms back on, I had regained the same volume within about a week and so no decrease in organic traffic from those terms.

By: Daniel Waisberg

Daniel Waisberg — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:36:40 +0000

Thanks Jeff, very interesting indeed! It reminds me of what Avinash has been saying for a while, which is very data oriented: Measure Cannibalization Rate (vs. Organic). He proposes a way to measure how much and where should you use both based on your Web Analytics data.