Do People Actually Click on Google PPC Ads?

Are People Actually Clicking on Google PPC Ads?

Yes, people do click on PPC advertisements on Google. While some users skip over the ads, there’s millions of clicks on PPC ads each day. 

58% of Alphabet’s revenue comes from Google search. In Q1 of 2022, paid advertisements generated $39.6 billion for Google. If people were not clicking on paid ads, Google would not be generating record revenue from paid search.

Organic vs. Paid

There’s a misconception that people trust organic search queries over paid advertisements. Because of this, when someone is conducting a Google search, they skip over the paid ads and will find their desired result organically. 

According to Smart Insights, only 28% of people think organic results are more reputable than Ads.

This isn’t to say that people don’t skip over paid advertisements. For me, I intentionally skip paid ads since I don’t want advertisers to get charged when I can find the query organically. I speak with clients who say they skip over paid ads because they trust the organic results more.

There are people that skip over paid advertisements for different psychological reasons. To think that nobody clicks on paid advertisements is not accurate.

Why People Trust Organic Queries

For Google PPC Ads, you can start driving traffic to your website instantly. If you set-up a Google Ads account and create advertisements, once approved, you’ll be driving traffic to your website. It’s a quick process.

To rank organically on Google, it can be more time consuming. Your website needs to have authority and trust. If you are in a competitive industry, you won’t rank on Google instantly. You need to have other websites linking back to your site. Google views relevant and authoritative links pointing back to your site as indicators that your site is trustworthy. 

The average consumer’s thought process makes sense why they may trust organic results over paid advertisements. The top organic results tend to have more trust indicators pointing towards their site.

There are plenty of websites that try to manipulate Google’s algorithm to rank better so you can’t always trust that organic placement is the most reputable.

Why You Should Trust Google Paid Ads

According to Google, all advertisements go through an approval process to ensure the ads are safe and appropriate for users.

Google is incentivized to promote a good experience for people viewing their advertisements. If Google is suspect of an advertisement or an advertiser, they are going to flag it and there’s a chance the ad doesn’t get approved.

If someone is paying for Google PPC ads, they have the financial means to place the ads on Google. This doesn’t mean the ads are always trustworthy. In many instances, the company placing the advertisement has revenue coming in to help pay for the ads, meaning the advertiser has validity.

Test For Yourself

If you’re questioning whether people click on PPC ads and if they work, set-up ads to see if you start generating clicks. 

You don’t need a large budget to get started. You’ll be able to see the search terms to analyze the quality of each click. You can also set-up conversion tracking via Google Ads to see whether or not the clicks turned into leads or sales.

Google PPC advertisements are often the first query to appear when someone is conducting a search. Make sure the ad copy is strong. Use image, location, sitelink and callout extensions. Select your keywords strategically. If you follow these steps, you’ll start to see that people will be clicking on your ads, if there’s enough search volume