PPC2 Reasons to Love the New Google AdWords Paid & Organic Report

2 Reasons to Love the New Google AdWords Paid & Organic Report

Google recently added a report that shows the total traffic by keyword from paid and organic search. As data started pouring in to the account it was easy to see why this report will be very valuable to marketers. Here are two of those reasons.

Google recently launched a brand new report that shows the total traffic by keyword from paid and organic search. This is the first report of its kind. This report is available in the dimensions tab after linking your Google AdWords and Webmaster Tools accounts.

We too often as paid search marketers think only about paid search and ignore anything else around us. So when this report was announced I was excited to learn of the news and started linking up our clients Webmaster Tools accounts quickly.

I have been really working on trying to find and increase points of integration this year. This report is one additional feather in the cap that validates the importance of multiple tactics working together to their total maximize value.

As data started pouring in to the account it was easy to see why this report will be very valuable to marketers. Here are two of those reasons.

1. Co-Exposure Monitoring

Better understanding the value of having both paid and organic listings display. What is the right mix and position of keywords in the results page? Now we can run tests and understand how rank, and coverage impacts market share, CTR, and conversions.

For example, a keyword like “running shoes” may be too expensive via paid search to run at top positions. With this report you can now understand how much traffic is moved or shifted to your organic listing if you move to position 5 in paid.

A key part in making a great search marketer is finding maximum value from all of search, and not just squeezing every nickel from PPC.

2. Keyword identification

What keywords are we getting traffic on and via what sources? We are now able to quickly and easily understand situations where paid traffic is driving high volume, but organic is not present.

We can also look out for keyword trends based on search volume we may not be aware of. For example, maybe the offline team is running a promotion, but never loops in the digital team (I know this never happens right?). With this report we can determine if given various match types or Google’s algorithm if there is any traffic to warrant a strategy.

Visualizing Paid & Organic Clicks

The report makes it possible to quickly visualize the overlap of paid and organic traffic, and the total share of voice. My company did this using a tool built internally and showed us the following for a client, which for the sake of this example targets “fake shoes” keywords:

Top Keywords Both Shown

  • Keywords that have a high impression share, or strong CTR in paid, still are largely dominated by SEO traffic.
  • You can’t make any assumptions on the value of paid or organic and the maximum value between both channels. Given personalization, the competitive set, and universal search, there are general rules, but not absolutes, as it relates to the “right” strategy to pick globally for an account.

Summary

Overall, I applaud Google for the access to this data. I’m excited to continue to use this data to make more inclusive decisions. It really is a great way to advance search marketing as a discipline and encourage us to reach across the aisle more frequently to our organic search friends.

You have to remember when we take our search marketing hats off, we’re customers. Customers in general don’t know the difference between paid and organic search results. They just want to find what they are looking for.

As search marketers, we want those customers to find our specific listings. This report and maximizing the total impact of the search results page is a great step forward. I can’t wait to run my next paid and organic search overlap report to see if this changes the landscape.

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