Does Google favor Adwords advertisers in search?
Here is an old myth that reiterates in the SEO industry. I say it clearly this is a myth, but I’d be willing to reconsider if anyone has enough evidence to share with me thus changing my mind.
According to this myth, Adwords advertisers get treated favorably because they simply have deep pockets and pay loads of money to Google. Small advertisers or webmasters not engaged in PPC, don’t have a chance competing in this environment.
This recalls me of the battle between the multi-million business store and the next door grocery store, which will be eaten from the big shark eventually. But anyway, let’s talk about the search industry.
I believe this notion of Adwords gaming the search results has been invented from people outside the SEO industry or marginally related to it. From a first look, one could find a reason why those people think this way as both (Adwords and Search Results) are served/run by the same company (Google).
But in reality, it usually comes, and is used from, webmasters and marketers as an excuse to explain why they have not be able to rank even one web page. The term ‘Search Engine Optimization’ is true that it has been and still is, abused by many people who claim they know everything, or just about enough to rank a site, self-proclaimed as SEO experts or professionals.
I will talk about this issue in a next post, for now, let’s just say that, in my opinion based on my experience, I have never seen or read no evidence of such favorable treatment and I will give two examples here:
- Just think for a minute, where the large stores, the big players who spend thousands of dollars in advertising, would be in the search results, if only they could ‘game’ or buy spots this way? Why don’t they occupy all the product/services, local and national search results since they have the budget and the means?
- If only this was true, it could seriously hurt the Google brand, when its users (making search queries) could not find the value or information they wanted, but only bump on products/services showing up from those large advertisers. Most probably, a considerable amount of people/users would switch to using a more ‘objective’ search engine and there are certainly some candidates.
About the Author
Ted Politidis is a Digital Consultant working on Search Engines Strategy and Quality signals closely related to technical and/or content issues. Interested in getting the best out of content marketing and user-experience techniques, he publishes on his blog: https://www.ergoseo.com/blog
Follow him on Twitter https://twitter.com/ergoseo and Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedpolitidis/
