Paid Search/PPC (Pay Per Click) FAQ

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What is meant by paid search, and how does it work?

Paid search markets to users who are searching for your products or services by running paid ads on the search engines, or on other websites. Paid search is also sometimes referred to as PPC (pay per click), and SEM (search engine marketing). 

Paid search works by creating ads and submitting them directly to the search engines you’d like to advertise on — most commonly, Google and Bing. You are then charged a fee when someone clicks on your ad. The exceptions to this are display ads and video ads, which are different formats of paid search ads.

Display ads are usually charged based on cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM), and video ads are typically charged for each view (CPV). Display ads often are shown on other sites related to your ad, or on news sites.

How much do the search engines charge for ads?

The cost to run ads on search engines depends on the selected bidding strategy, daily budget, and the quality of your ads.

Daily budget: all advertisers set a daily budget, which can be as little as $1.00/day. Regardless of what bidding strategy is selected, the amount of money you spend each month will never exceed the amount equal to your daily budget times the number of days that month. This means that ads may be paused once you reach your daily budget limit, or spaced throughout the day until the limit is reached.

Bidding strategy: bidding strategies tell the search engines how much you are willing to spend for people to view or click on your ad. Bidding strategies should be based on goals. Example goals include viewing an ad, clicking on an ad, completing a form, purchasing a product, subscribing to a YouTube channel, and so on. Based on your goal — and thus your bidding strategy — the search engines will charge based on either a set maximum amount per click or view, or a set maximum amount per conversion.  There are other, more intricate bidding strategies, but the key is this: the search engines charge how much you are willing to pay for the interactions completed by potential customers.

Ad quality: the quality of an ad affects the cost of each ad interaction. Notice that when talking about bidding strategy, we said that charges are based on a maximum amount you are willing to pay? The cost of interaction with an ad is rarely what you set as the maximum. The higher the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages — known together as quality score — the more likely you are to pay less and have better ad positioning.  

A note about automated bidding: Many bidding strategies use automated bidding and smart bidding, which automatically adjust bids using AI based on likelihood of the desired interaction. While this can lead to higher fluctuation in the cost per view or cost per interaction (and the placement of your ads), your cost will still never exceed what has been configured as your monthly budget.

How do you charge for paid search?

At Top Of The List, search engine costs are charged directly to your credit card by the search engines. The cost of our PPC management services are invoiced to you monthly.

Do paid search ads show up on all search engines?

No. Paid search ads only display on the search engines where an advertiser is running ads, and if opted in, to their search network. 

Companies typically choose to advertise on Google (via Google Ads) and Bing (via Microsoft Ad Manager), as those two search engines account for over 90% of searches performed worldwide.

Google’s search network partners include Ask.com, Dogpile.com, Lycos.com, Amazon, Walmart, and Target, as well as Google’s other sites like Google Maps, YouTube, etc. 

Bing’s search network partners include Yahoo, AOL, and DuckDuckGo, as well as Microsoft’s other sites like MSN, Outlook.com, Edge, etc.

What happens to my business’ visibility if I stop paying for PPC?

Your paid search ads will stop running as soon as:

  1. The ads are purposely paused in your portal, or
  2. The search engines attempt to process a payment but fail to receive it. This often happens when your credit card limits max out, or the card number or expiration date changes.

Search engine charge dates are based on your payment schedule (typically when you meet a payment threshold or at the end of a set time period).

We recommend pausing your ads as soon as you decide you no longer want to run — or pay for — PPC advertising.

When your ads stop running, the only way to appear on the search engine results page is through organic placement or map placement. This is why a multichannel digital marketing strategy is recommended for optimal search engine visibility.

What percent of Google searches result in clicks on sponsored ads?

There unfortunately isn’t much recent, large-scale data out there to answer this question. Here is what we know: 

Statista data from 2020 shows that 64.82% of searchers were zero-click searches. These typically happen when people ask a question and get their answer directly on the results page without needing to click through to the website. If we disregard the zero click searches completely, about 4.5% of clicks were on ads, and 95.5% on organic search results.

Another study published on Statista shows that in 2022, the click-through rate for Google Ads ranged anywhere from 2.2% up to 16%, depending on the industry. However, we’re uncertain if this includes zero-click searches or not.

What we do know is that this number is constantly changing. The search engines are changing how ads look regularly, and searchers continue to change how they search and what they click on (or don’t click on).

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