Paid search results
What are paid search results?
Paid search results are adverts that appear on a search results page, usually above and below the organic results, where advertisers pay for clicks. On Google they come from Google Ads and are labelled “Sponsored”. They include text ads, which look much like organic listings, and Shopping ads with product images and prices.
Ad positions are decided by an auction that weighs each advertiser’s bid against the ad’s quality and expected impact. Paid results are part of search engine marketing, alongside SEO; buying ads does not affect organic rankings.
Why paid search results matter for SEO
Ads take space at the top of many commercial results pages, which pushes organic results down and affects how many clicks a top organic ranking earns. Check how many ads appear for your target keywords before you estimate traffic.
Ad data helps SEO. Cost per click shows how much advertisers will pay for a keyword, which is a good proxy for its commercial value, and keywords that convert well in ads are often worth targeting organically.
How to use paid search data for SEO
- Look at CPC alongside search volume when you prioritise keywords: high CPC usually means buying intent.
- Use your own Google Ads conversion data to find keywords worth ranking for organically.
- Check how many ads and shopping results show for a keyword before estimating organic traffic from it.
- Where you rank first organically for your own brand, test whether pausing brand ads changes total clicks.
Paid search results FAQ
Do Google Ads improve organic rankings?
No. Google keeps ads and organic ranking separate. Running ads does not raise, or lower, your organic positions.
How can I tell an ad from an organic result?
On Google, ads are labelled “Sponsored”. Organic results have no label.
Related SEO terms
Search engine marketing (SEM) is promoting a website in search engines. It usually means paid search ads, and sometimes means SEO plus ads together.
Cost per click (CPC) is what advertisers pay for one click on a search ad. In SEO, a keyword’s CPC hints at how commercially valuable it is.
Organic search is the unpaid part of search results, where pages appear because the search engine judged them relevant, not because someone paid.
Shopping results are product listings in Google Search showing images, prices and stores, from Merchant Center feeds or product structured data.
SERP features are the results on Google’s results page that are not plain blue links, such as AI Overviews, featured snippets, local packs and videos.
Commercial intent is when a searcher is researching before buying, comparing products, brands or services with searches like "best" or "vs".