If you’re a seasoned digital market, you probably know that Google, Bing and many other search engines display both free and paid listings. To the average consumer, however, these listings often appear the same.
Free vs Paid Listings
Also known as organic listings, free listings are curated and created by the search engine’s algorithm. They crawl websites, looking at a variety of signals to determine where and how to rank them. In comparison, paid listings are created through pay-per-click (PPC) marketing platforms like Google AdWords and Bing Ads. Business owners pay to display their listings in the search results for their preferred target keywords.
You can distinguish between a free and paid search listing by looking for the “Ad” tag in Google. All paid search listings in Google feature this ad, indicating that it’s a paid advertisements. Free listings, on the other hand, do not have an “Ad” tag.
More than Half of Users Can’t Spot Paid Listings
Even with the “Ad” tag, however, many users still have trouble distinguishing between free and paid search listings. According to a recent study conducted by OfCom, 55% of users cannot tell the difference between free and paid search listings. This means more than half of all Internet users assume search listings are the same.
For the study, researchers presented participants with search results, asking them to classify listings as free or paid.
“Their attention was drawn to the first three results at the top of the list, which were distinguished by an orange box with the word ‘Ad’ written in it. They were then prompted with three options and asked whether any of these applied to these first three results,” explained the study’s authors.
The Bottom Line
So, what does this study mean for small business owners? It means that PPC platforms like AdWords and Bing Ads blur the lines between organic and paid listings. Paid advertisements are often frowned upon by consumers, many of whom disregard them as being untrustworthy. If a consumer believes a paid listing is free, however, they’ll continue to trust it — just like a free listing. This doesn’t mean you should attempt to fool your target audience by making your ads appear like organic listings. Rather, you should embrace PPC to further enhance your business’s digital footprint.
If you want to leverage the power of search marketing, you should invest in PPC. It’s arguably one of the most cost-effective ways to promote a product or service. And because it follows a convenient cost-per-click format (CPC), it’s also easy to optimize. Assuming your earnings per click (EPC) is higher than your CPC, you have a winning formula that’s generating profit.
