A Test: Do PPC campaigns have an effect on the organic results?

Hi Quirkstars. I am one of those heated debatees on Eric's blog, so I cannot wait to see / analyse the results of your test ;-) After having seen a 'co-incidence' of results between PPC and SEO / organic search, I still feel there is an INdirect connection between the 2, but this makes it even more exciting to await those results!!

Posted by michelle clarke on 2008/02/01

This is going to be very interesting indeed. Looking forward to the results!

Posted by JBagley on 2008/02/01

"We've set up the test on an anonymous site, targeting a unique phrase which currently has no results on Google. "

I'd be interested to know the following if you could expand on the circumstances a bit more, for the sake of accuracy of the results:

1. Domain extension of site - is it .com or .co.za etc?
2. Is it a new domain or was it purchased quite a while ago?
3. If not a new domain, did it previously have any content published on it?
4. What is the industry? Is it competitive?
5. Have you applied any SEO techniques to the site or content, or left it "blank"?
6. "a unique phrase which currently has no results on Google" - how unique? is it something other people are bidding on?
7. What is the test period?

tx

Posted by Christine on 2008/02/01

In order to control for all those questions in the previous test. What you actually need to do is create identical copies of the site and do PPC on the one and not the other, and see if it ranks higher than without PPC.

Ideally, there should be a few replications to control for variations in the URL too, but perhaps that's going a bit far for the purposes of this debate :)

Posted by Anthony on 2008/02/04

When advertisers in Adwords syndicate their adverts on other sites (formally know as “site targeting” and more recently known as “placement targeting”) all the syndicated adverts run through a Google syndication URL – such as
“http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?....”

Since the overall ranking algorithms of the various search engines pass rank and SEO value directly through the referring URL to the referred URL, it is more than safe to conclude that any SEO or rank value is nullified since syndicated adverts redirect via Googles syndication URL. (i.e. your syndicated advert redirects via Google when clicked on to arrive at your webiste).

Additionally Google itself shows the importance of adhering to its own algorithms in terms of link profile, and redirection, and it is for this reason that syndication happens on the URL “googlesyndication.com” as apposed to “google.com”.

More importantly than the facts that I have stated above, any tests that are run with regards to this subject will remain open and subject to interpretation, since there are many variables to consider when looking at ranking organically.

For example if the “test” in question is run in an uncompetitive low volume sector, organic ranking may occur or increase naturally, and thus is not subject to the influence of PPC syndication etc.

The only exercise or test that could truly prove that PPC syndication might have an affect on organic SEO would be to run the test across several highly competitive sectors, where both the Keyword Effectiveness index is saturated as well as factoring that the competing sites in those sectors have strong backlink and rank profiles.

The bottom line here is that to anyone who is intimately involved and aware of the SEO algorithms, policies and historical issues that created these algorithms, this is a cut any dry case.

Syndicated PPC does not have an affect on Organic SEO.

Posted by Justin Harrison on 2008/02/04

Well, in short, we have two brand spanking new (.com) domains which are targeting unique, non-industry specific keywords.

The unique phrases currently do not yield any Google results, and we'll be monitoring the test and hoping to see the pages indexed through the paid ad campaign - alternatively through contextual ads. We're hoping to see some form of reaction within a month.

If the pages do get indexed through PPC there will be reason to celebrate, but the test will only be entering its second phase. The next step is to aim for a rank...

Posted by Damian on 2008/02/04

Cool test. Personally, just for fun more than anything else...

There's no way PPC campaigns affect Google organic search results. It would go against Google's policies and cause a stir like no other in the SEO world.

They are two very seperate elements to internet marketing. It is why many companies offer either PPC or Organic search marketing as a service.

A very good way to market your site as we all know if to run both campaigns but there is no way PPC could affect it. Your test won't wrk either. Like some have commented already, this would need to be run in a very competative space.

See this article for some comments. I'm also going to try get Matt Cutts to shed some light here see if he'll answer this question for us...

http://www.seobook.com/archives/001939.shtml

Posted by Ivolution SEO on 2008/02/04

Hi Damian with regards to indexing this is indeed possible and does happen, since the basis of indexing is based on URL discovery either through direct submission to the search engine or via the URL discovery algorithm, which is in itself a very simplistic crawler algorithm that discovers the URL and then checks the index to look for duplicate entries or imposed penalties.

However as you correctly noted, ranking and indexing are worlds apart and the far more sophisticated rankling algorithm will not gain any SEO or rank value from PPC.

Posted by Justin Harrison on 2008/02/05