I read with interest – and a degree of cynicism the recent research study by Google which highlighted a number of mindboggling statistics as to the impact of paid search in terms of driving incremental clicks to a site. The study for those that haven’t read it yet, suggested that an estimated 89% of ad clicks are incremental. At first glance that suggests a significant missed opportunity to potential advertisers that may be undecided about employing a doubleplay (or even triple play) search strategy which encompasses and tactically uses PPC alongside a mature and highly visible SEO campaign.

One may call me a sceptic – however I have been doing this job long enough to not take any research study at first glance However one has to take a closer look at the figures before jumping to any significant decisions as to how to move your integrated search spend forward in the long run. Firstly one has to accept – Google makes NO money from organic search and much of the revenue Google generates is from sources such as their traditional paid search inventory, the rapidly increasing mobile offering and the display network which Google increasingly takes more and more market share every month. As such any such studies are more than likely going to favour these channels rather than the organic model. One has to ask yourself in a similar situation with your business hat on – would you? (more…)