7 ms·

Ask HN: Why do companies buy ads when they are the top result in search?

• tf2manu994 10y ago
  Yep. It's a defense mechanism. Also prevents someone from buying an ad for Squarespace.co or some other domain for a phishing site, which could result in bad press from a """"hack"""" (note the use of quotes, it's not hacking.)
  • withdavidli 10y ago
    This happened with torrenting sites and other free software. Top results were ads that charged people money.
• calbear81 10y ago
  This study (http://searchengineland.com/google-research-even-if-you-rank-1-organically-you-can-double-your-clicks-with-paid-search-116713 http://searchengineland.com/google-research-even-if-you-rank...) is a bit old and possibly biased (since sponsored by Google) but when I worked in SEM the experience we had was the same which was the top organic position + the top paid position netted overall more traffic to our site than with just the organic position alone. The other considerations are: 1) Brand SEM terms are cheap - if you own the brand, especially something like Squarespace, your ad will have a high quality score and will thus pay a much lower CPC than a competitor trying to vie for eyeballs with your brand name as a keyword. This means that brand terms generally are pretty cheap to buy. 2) Real estate ownership - The more real estate on the page you own the more click share you will get. This will keep other organic listings from getting click share which may mean your competitors will get less traffic off of searches for you. 3) Control over message - Ads provide a high degree of creative control which means you can change the copy and also add on Ad Extensions like sitelinks, app download buttons, "click to call" buttons, etc. These are all things that are harder to control on your organic listing.
  • soared 10y ago
    Great explanation - I'll add two things. 1. If you're not there, someone else is. If Nike didn't buy brand terms, adidas would and would steal tons of customers. 2. Paid results (and other results like maps, shopping, etc) often push organic results below the fold so no one sees them. You need to be above the fold.
    • chillydawg 10y ago
      Lol, so it's extortion by google? Superb model!
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    • ceasarby 10y ago
      1. I don't think that you can buy ads using other company's trademark. It's against Adwords policy. TS using "Squarespace" as example, not "web shop".
      • vgeek 10y ago
        Can bid on keywords, you just can't use trademarked terms in ad copy. Google loves branded Kws on Adwords. Bidding on competitors will have a low quality score, but drives up the competition for the brand owner. With all of the above the fold distractions, you basically have to pay if you want to be above the fold.
      • arbuge 10y ago
        This is incorrect. You certainly can buy competitor trademarks as keywords. You are only restricted from using them in ad copy. Source: https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6118?hl=en https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6118?hl=en
  • davemel37 10y ago
    This reflects the core argument to do this...but the truth is more subtle. Agencies and in house SEM teams are inherently biased to want to spend on brand terms because a) they can attribute more sales to their channel and b) Justify more spend which equals more revenue for most agencies... I am not discounting the validity of the argument to bid on brand terms and I bid on brand terms for most of my clients...but I always disclose this inherent bias before making a recommendation... In truth, every brand should test for themselves how it impacts their bottom line and if protecting their brand is worth the spend... ------ The cynical voice in my head thinks that most digital advertising today is really ad tech companies hijacking revenue that brands earned already...and if not for competitors using that same tech, no one really needs it... (i.e. remarketing, custom audiences, branded search, first party data, etc...) In reality, I actively spend my clients money on these tactics and congratulate myself on the results I generate for them... but in the back of my mind I am waiting for the ad tech bubble to burst and media companies disappearing and being replaced by branded content, content marketing, etc... Edit:spelling
• hogrammer 10y ago
  Also if they're likely to choose the organic link anyway, there's less of a cost if it's a pay-per-click arrangement
• slap_shot 10y ago
  As others have already explained, it is done to prevent competing services from achieving the number one spot for your search result. There is a very cool and informative video from Google that shows what goes into bidding for and awarding the ads that are shown. I had truly encourage you watch this: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PjOHTFRaBWA http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PjOHTFRaBWA
• bruceb 10y ago
  I attended a talk by Nordstrom's SEO team and one of their findings was people who click on the top ads spend more than people who click on non ads links. They seemed to think the paid search results might align closer to what the buyer was looking for. That being said they were not 100% sure.
  • rokhayakebe 10y ago
    people who click on the top ads spend more Probably because they are less web savvy and less aware of the options they have.
    • totalZero 10y ago
      I don't see why clicking the ad makes you less web savvy. You're not the one paying for it. As an alternative, perhaps people who click the top ad are pressed for time, which is often the case with high income individuals.
      • user5994461 10y ago
        >>> I don't see why clicking the ad makes you less web savvy. Web Savyy people have AdBlockers. It's the first thing to install right after the operating system itself. Clicking the ad means you don't have an AdBlocker, therefore you are not web savyy.
        • totalZero 10y ago
          ... We're talking about ads in Google search results, right? Not banner ads? Am I missing something??
          • deleted 10y ago
            [deleted]
          • user5994461 10y ago
            Yes we're talking about ads in Google search results. They are blocked by adblockers. (Well, except the official flavour of AdBlock Plus, which was paid a shitton of money by Google to stop blacklisting them :D)
• griffinmichl 10y ago
  Because if they don't their competitors will.
• gsylvie 10y ago
  It increases the clickable area that will result in a visit to your site, it blocks others from taking up any of that critical real estate (via ads or organic rank), and like others have said, it's probably relatively cheap for the brand owner to bid on their own brand. I think increasing the clickable area is pretty important, especially with mobile users. And customers, since they know it's an ad, might be nice and click on the organic link instead. :-)
• mcbailey 10y ago
  A group of economists at Ebay ran a series of experiments to measure the value or promoted links when the brand already own the top organic link http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/stadelis/Tadelis.pdf http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/stadelis/Tadelis.pdf They find no measurable short term benefit to purchasing the "Ebay" keyword on sales.
  • blahi 10y ago
    Yeah, ask them how they felt about it when they turned adwords off.
• LyalinDotCom 10y ago
  Marketers often work with middle man companies to create the ads, you'd be surprised I think if you heard how many times the ad owner never even looks at the results of how it looks to customers. But also lots of the other reasons posted here are very true too.
  • davemel37 10y ago
    SERIOUSLY???? I have to beg my clients to stop googling themselves!!! In all seriousness, clients obsess about their ads and how it appears way more than the agencies do...They often don't realize that it can hurt their CTR, their quality scores, and pollute the data used to measure results... Google built an ad preview tool for this very reason.
    • vram22 10y ago
      How does it hurt and pollute? New to this.
      • nsomaru 10y ago
        If you are interacting with your own ads, the data you get at the end (especially if you are low traffic/a small player) will not be representative of reality, as your actions would have hurt/polluted the result.
        • vram22 10y ago
          Got it, thanks.
      • davemel37 10y ago
        A big factor in how much you pay for every click is quality score. The likely biggest factor in quality score is your relative click through rate for the position (i.e. Google wants to show the ad that gets clicked more because it makes them more revenue, if you get clicked 10% of the time for a keyword in position 2 and your competitor gets clicked 8% of the time, Google wants to show your ad and even gives you a discount of sorts on the click via higher quality score.) So, if you google your keywords to see how your ad appears, you have 2 choices. Click on your ad, which will cost you money or dont click and lower your click through rate which can lower your quality score, especially if you do it often. The issue of polluting data is that now your agency or whoever is managing your SEM sees either a lower click through rate if your dont click or a lower conversion rate if you do click and will make optimization decisions without knowing how many searches were you. Google has an ad preview tool in Adwords to let you check without impacting your data. In the greater scheme of things, if its a high volume query, the harm is minimal, but if its a high value term with low search volume (i.e. a big ticket local service) it can really hurt you.
• 47 10y ago
  If you don't advertise on your brand keywords, your competitor will. We spend quiet a lot on our brand keywords to avoid competitor siphoning off our brand traffic.
  • forcer 10y ago
    Isnt bidding on trademarked keywords forbidden on google these days?
    • davemel37 10y ago
      No, it is allowed. You just can't put a trademarked term in your ad copy. You can even get away with putting the trademark in your ad copy unless the brand told Google to enforce their trademark. There are tricks to get around this as well that sometimes work. (i.e. Dynamic Keyword Insertion) edit: Source: https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6118?hl=en https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6118?hl=en
  • dvirsky 10y ago
    Isn't this trademark violation? I'm not from the US, but years ago I used to work for a local index-style search engine (before Google ate everyone's meal), and IIRC we consulted our lawyers and came to the conclusion that this is not legal, and we didn't sell these sort of ads.
    • davemel37 10y ago
      https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6118?hl=en https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6118?hl=en
• gleb 10y ago
  I'll add one more - analytics. It's the only way to get accurate impression numbers. Which is a useful thing to trend for brand keywords.
  • gk1 10y ago
    What's wrong with impression numbers from Google Search Console? They're free.
    • angry-hacker 10y ago
      Only very limited 3 months of worth data. Everything costs nowadays when it comes to Google. And Facebook.
• fragsworth 10y ago
  My experience with Google ads was that it is very easy to accidentally get them to display your ad in this way, without you knowing it. You choose a list of terms you want to show your ad in, but by default Google will also put your ad up in "related" searches. If your company or product is already popular enough, it's likely to end up in the related searches for the terms you chose. This cost me quite a bit of money before I found out I was wasting money on these ads by accident.
  • davemel37 10y ago
    > by default Google will also put your ad up in "related" searches. I don't mean to be harsh, but you shouldn't be spending money on search advertising without taking the 2 minutes to understand match types. There is no default other than showing you very closely related variant matching (i.e. plural to singular)... Yes, if you run broad match keywords and dont use negatives, you run the risk of wasting lots of money...but it's hardly a default setting.
    • kgwgk 10y ago
      I think he means related searches as in http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/google-related-searches-competitors.png http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/g... If I understand his comment, if you select the term "sweatshirt" your add is also displayed when people search "American Eagle," and that may be yourself and you're wasting money.
      • davemel37 10y ago
        He was referring to running broad match keywords by accident...My point was that its reckless to advertise without understanding match types... Google gives you nearly complete control over which terms they show you on using keyword match types and negative keywords...No one should be advertising with Google without understanding this. https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2497836?hl=en https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2497836?hl=en
• NumberCruncher 10y ago
  Googling in Munich (logged in in Chrome) for squarespace I get an ad for siteground.com.
  • wysiwylwysiwyl 10y ago
    Googling "squarespace -squarespace" I get the ad for squarespace without competing ads or organics.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• pakitan 10y ago
  To add some anecdotal data, even when our company was at #1 for our main search phrase and when there were fewer PPC competitors, we were still getting more traffic with PPC + organic, rather than leaving it just to the organic listing. It's like there were 2 different sets of people - those who tend to click on ads and those who tend to click on organic results. And you want both. That was quite a long time ago. Nowadays, for our main search phrase, there are 4 PPC ads at this time. And Google is now blending ads much better with the organic results, they are barely distinguishable to the untrained eye. Being #1 organic result doesn't bring you that much benefit in that setup, you're actually being #5 overall - barely visible.
  • B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
    IOW: "Nice business you have here, it would be a shame if something happened to it ..."
  • anarazel 10y ago
    "blending ads much better with the organic results" shiver
• venins 10y ago
  if they don't buy their competitors will buy.
• f_allwein 10y ago
  Side question: would you click on the ad or on the organic search result? Why?
  • dvirsky 10y ago
    I'm clicking the ad! If someone went through the trouble and payed for putting their website above their website, I'll make sure that their ad budget is well spent! /s
  • davemel37 10y ago
    Believe it or not, even in 2016, even with the ad label, there are still plenty of people who have no idea that there is a difference between the paid and organic listings... They just go to Google and click on a link with a snippet that speaks to them. Personally, as a search marketer, I always assume that someone willing to pay money to reach me probably has a more relevant offering and experience for me, so I am slightly biased to click on ads... Your question should really be more nuanced. Are you talking about navigational searches, informational searches, or transactional searches. There is different intent and context with how and why people search at different times which probably results in different behavior. For example, an informational search from me almost never clicks on an ad but either knowledge graph or a link half way down the page. A transactional search will almost always go to a paid ad, and a navigational search will likely go to the organic listing that points to that page...unless the ad points to that specific page. (this is just my own experience.)
    • jackgolding 10y ago
      Also for SAAS products on branded terms you are more likely to get a better new customer experience on a tailored landed page than the homepage (for some businesses anyway.) I agree with informational search, I think that clicking on an ad will put me lower in their sales funnel which means more annoying popups and remarketing.
  • kentt 10y ago
    A lot of people don't know, pay attention, or care enough.
• freyir 10y ago
  If they didn't buy the ad, someone else's ad would be at the top. Many people don't distinguish between the top search result and the ad.
• jmatthews 10y ago
  I got in to a debate with my business partner about this very subject. It turns out non-technical people tend not to distinguish between organic results and paid results. For example, he personally clicks our brand based ad instead of our organic result when he googles us. I had to explain that we were spending money every time he did that.
• symbolepro 10y ago
  Localization is also one of the reasons. For eg., I live in japan and when I search for amazon in google, the organic result is .com but the top ad link is .co.jp. And I always click the ad link.
• garyadamshannon 10y ago
  Brand reinforcement. The more you see it, the more you know it, the more likely you are to trust / use the brand. It's simple really.
• sfifs 10y ago
  Yes - It is mainly so that a competitor doesn't show up above your organic search results by buying your keywords and it adds another line item for your brand.
• known 10y ago
  I think to circumvent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb
• douche 10y ago
  Marketers and ad reps are very good at rationalizing and justifying their existence. As someone else mentioned down thread, I'm happy to reward those who cannibalize their organic results and help ensure that their adwords budget doesn't go unused...
• dccoolgai 10y ago
  Because the ad is the first search result. We don't even really care that much anymore how our "organic" results play out.
• alkjshdkfjasdf 10y ago
  I am a little late to the party, but want to address one topic that I didn't see mentioned below. One answer to your question is "volume", with a related cause of personal incentives. You're getting those clicks for free and buying ads on branded terms is just cannibalizing your organic results. Now, instead of $500 per day, you want to scale your campaign to $5,000 per day. How do you do that? Your return will be less efficient as you seek volume, but you need to spend the $5,000 as effectively as you can. You (or the agency) look better / get paid more when they're able to spend with a better return. It's probably not your department, or your KPI, what the organic SEO is like. So if you cannibalize some conversions from organic in the SEM attempt to spend the budget and raise conversions, you're probably happy, because you're hitting KPIs that matter to you. It would take a wise leader to recognize what is happening. Even then, they might decide that although the efficiency of the overall SEO/SEM spend is lowered, it provides more volume. If your company is focused on growth, they may prefer volume over efficiency. It's rational, once you try to see the larger context in which these decisions are made w/in a company. (It also has it's drawbacks)
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• shostack 10y ago
  I actually overlap with SquareSpace on non branded terms in some areas and helped lead the search group at a top search agency in my last job. Not tooting my horn, just sharing my credentials since these threads inevitably have lots of uninformed rants and assumptions. Many brands could see a lift from bidding on brand terms not just in click volume from covering more of the SERPs but particularly conversion rates from controlling one of the most prominent placements of your brand online. Ad extensions can do wonders for many, and Google didn't fully let you control messaging for your homepage like you can with brand term ads. Beyond that there are a few other really compelling reasons that make it a no brainer in many cases. - Control the landing page URL, particularly for setting parameters or a/b testing - Controlling site link messaging and URLs to help searchers self select a more relevant experience, particularly if you have multiple audiences - Potentially a slight boost to account level quality score (I've seen mixed data on this) - I don't see this mentioned enough, but you can get solid organic query volume data in AdWords now - Super valuable insight into the raw queries. Are people searching for "your brand vs new competitor brand?" Are they searching around some horrible PR that you were unaware of? Maybe they are looking to see if you sell a product and if you don't you should consider it. With secure search everywhere now, this is arguably one of your best data sources for these sorts of insights For the pennies per click you pay it is absolutely worth it in many cases. If you have doubts, Google just released their data driven attribution model in AdWords, which, among others, can help inform whether you are giving too much credit to them (although this can be hard to actually determine). For most companies I'd fully educate on the pros and cons and recommend trying them before making uninformed assumptions. At this point, I typically default to enabling them fwiw.
• FollowSteph3 10y ago
  Because competitors will big on your company name and you want to appear before them in the search results.