Well how very strange...DOES paying for adverts affect your organic ranking?

[whitehat]

Maybe! :eek:

At least it seems that way after the trouble I have had lately.

The story in brief....

My site ranked 'fairly' well (position 7 to Position 12 usually for my main competitive keywords out of 5 million results)

until I made some on site changes the other week and we got booted to P4....no matter what I changed we were stuck on P4 :confused: The changes were all legitimate and I was very surprised to see this happen!

Then I got an email from Google reminding me my adwords account was suspended and 'please add some funds' as we are only poor folks here at Google :rolleyes:

ok. I thought...well it cant be due to that...but in desperation. I added some funds and got my adwords balance back up...

and whaddya know? 24 hours later I am back on the top of page 2 of Google :eek:

Seems this is either a very big coincidence or rather worrying.
and also difficult to prove....

Any thoughts or experiences from anyone please?

[beu]

That is an interesting coincidence but "Officially" one has nothing to do with the other. That said, I've seen similar happenings and have had the same question in the back of my mind for years!

[whitehat]

How bizarre?
My last post disappeared :confused::confused:

Thanks for the input Beu

It seems this is going to be an interesting one, and to that end I am in the process of setting up a controlled experiment!

Will update you of the results.....

If my post doesnt get deleted :)

[mikefarley]

Controlled experiment huh, planning on trying to catch out google are you. ;) Good luck with that.

[whitehat]

Controlled experiment huh, planning on trying to catch out google are you. ;) Good luck with that.

I know :eek:
Pretty Daunting prospect!!
But having said that, PPC balance is running low (already :eek:) so we will find out soon enough.

It seems that Google manages to 'cause' enough clicks to use up whatever PPC budget I set....with no visible benefit to us.....

[AdWordsRep]

Seems this is either a very big coincidence or rather worrying.
and also difficult to prove....

Any thoughts or experiences from anyone please? Yes, actually - I have both thoughts and experiences - and please forgive me if I exercise my sense of humor here a bit. :)

Thoughts: The short story (although it is often not believed by folks who would prefer to think otherwise for one reason or another) is that there is no connection between the unpaid search results and AdWords ads. One does not effect the other in any way.

Experiences: I have worked with AdWords for nearly five and a half years, and have posted in forums like this one for more than four of those years. During that time I have seen (and seen 'proved') every imaginable theory - with the most popular 'proven' theories including these:

On the one hand:

* Being an AdWords Advertiser will cause your site to appear in the SERPs if it is not there at present.

* Being an AdWords Advertiser will improve your appearance in the SERPs if you are already there

* Being an AdWords Advertiser and increasing your spend will improve your appearance in the SERPs if you are already there


And, on the other hand:

* Being an AdWords Advertiser will cause your site's position to plummet disastrously in the SERPs

* Being an AdWords Advertiser will cause your site to stop appearing in the SERPs altogether

* Being an AdWords Advertiser and substantially decreasing your spend will cause your site's position to plummet disastrously in the SERPs

* Being an AdWords Advertiser and closing your account will will cause your site's position to plummet disastrously in the SERPs

* Being an AdWords Advertiser and closing your account will will cause your site to disappear entirely from the SERPs


I have also seen any number of 'controlled experiments' performed, and their results published in support of one or another of these theories.

I've answered the basic question so many times in the past years, that I now have my own 'standard' response, which I think sums it up accurately:

There is no connection between one and the other. At the intersection of millions upon millions of sites indexed, many tens of thousands of AdWords advertisers, and gazillions of keywords, lies coincidence.

That is an interesting coincidence but "Officially" one has nothing to do with the other. Yep, that about sums it up. ;)

AWR

[whitehat]

There is no connection between one and the other. At the intersection of millions upon millions of sites indexed, many tens of thousands of AdWords advertisers, and gazillions of keywords, lies coincidence.

Yep, that about sums it up. ;)

AWR

Thanks.
but you work for Google :rolleyes:
Therefore I would not expect any other response from you :)

The fact you now have a standard response shows how often the question is asked.....

[AdWordsRep]

but you work for Google
Therefore I would not expect any other response from you

The fact you now have a standard response shows how often the question is asked.....

Agreed, agreed, and agreed.

All of which explains why I have to have a sense of humor about the whole thing. :)

AWR

[SanDiegoSEO]

If you don't believe the rep, take money out of your account and let us know what happens.

[whitehat]

If you don't believe the rep, take money out of your account and let us know what happens.

Watch this space ;)

[investing101]

On the one hand:

* Being an AdWords Advertiser will cause your site to appear in the SERPs if it is not there at present.

* Being an AdWords Advertiser will improve your appearance in the SERPs if you are already there

* Being an AdWords Advertiser and increasing your spend will improve your appearance in the SERPs if you are already there

Actually, wouldn't any of these actions be potentially more profitable for Google IF the advertiser was relatively new to Google? More traffic to his site -- whether coming from the SERPs or from his advertisements -- likely resulting in more business, would lead to a general positive response to his advertising efforts and he would be encouraged to continue with the campaign.



And, on the other hand:

* Being an AdWords Advertiser will cause your site's position to plummet disastrously in the SERPs

* Being an AdWords Advertiser will cause your site to stop appearing in the SERPs altogether

* Being an AdWords Advertiser and substantially decreasing your spend will cause your site's position to plummet disastrously in the SERPs

* Being an AdWords Advertiser and closing your account will will cause your site's position to plummet disastrously in the SERPs

* Being an AdWords Advertiser and closing your account will will cause your site to disappear entirely from the SERPs


At the same time, wouldn't these actions also potentially benefit Google, IF an advertiser had been advertising with Google for some time? Dropping his position in the SERPs after he dropped, or "just sustained," his advertising spending would hurt all his online business lead-generation, making him more reliant on (or making him consider returning to) a Google advertising campaign.

My point, just because there may be different results from advertisers' tests, would not conclusively prove that Google is not trying to "punish" or "reward" advertisers by shifting their positions in the SERPs in response to the advertisers' actions in their AdWords accounts. The different actions may be a specific response to specific characteristics in the advertising campaign, but all done with an intention of helping Google's bottom line.

Different observations by advertisers when they conduct tests could also be the result of "intentional" randomization to obscure the fact that Google is trying to "punish" or "reward" (or otherwise "motivate") advertisers in relation to their advertising spending.

While I have no problems with Google taking efforts to maximize earnings (it is a responsibility to their shareholders to do so) their previous comments would indicate that they do not manipulate their SERPs, so they would have a motivation to hide -- through the addition of randomized results -- such actions if they were taking them. There also may be contractual agreements they are effectively violating if they manipulate SERPs in response to an advertiser's AdWords campaign actions, so Google could be adding randomized elements to obscure detection.

(Google did argue successfully in court that their SERPs are "opinion" -- which is protected "free speech" -- and they cannot be held liable for any arbitrary ranking they may choose to make, but the cases I've read did not involve any AdWords customers claiming any violation of contract terms, they were just web-sites unhappy with position changes in the SERPs.)

[whitehat]

Some interesting points you make their investing101....

Well, I have completed phase 1 of my test :(

My adwords balance started to run low at the start of last week, nothing at all has changed on our site (except we have gained some nice relevant good PR links during that time!)....

I have monitored all sites above us in the serps....while a few have moved around, during the past 2 weeks we have gradually dropped 9 positions ('coincidentally' in line with our ad words balance!!) and now we are sat in the same position we were in (P25 or something useless) when I first suspected things were a bit odd.

So now my adwords balance is at Zero......

And it will be staying there for eternity as we have had no conversions from the traffic that has been sent.

So the real test comes if we rise up the organic rankings now due to working very hard to get some quality links from likeminded sites....

Im not sure what I will do if we don't...but it certainly won't have adwords on the tin!!
I'm starting to wish I had never opened an adwords account.....

Will update in a few weeks :)