Google Ads vs. Organic Search

Google Ads vs. Organic Search

SHARE
Marcus Biggs

By Marcus Biggs

Published February 12, 2019
Updated February 15, 2024

1 min read

Blog Feature Image

Unless you're one of the 20 percent of people using Bing or Yahoo, we all go searching for answers in the same place – Google.

The search engine giant, in all its tech glory, represents two completely different, yet equally valuable traffic sources: organic search and paid search.

The difference between the two?

Organic Search

Traffic coming from people who find your website in search engine results is classified as organic traffic.

Organic traffic is widely considered the most valuable traffic source. And for good reason, considering Google directs the highest amount of traffic to websites and it is the most trusted source of consumer research.

That being said, it is arguably the most challenging online marketing channel. Time and strategic optimisation make it a difficult yet rewarding channel.

Paid Search

Paid search involves running Google Ads campaigns to appear at the top of search results (above those that earned their page-one spots organically).

Google Ads has become more popular in recent years as organic search has become more competitive.

Rather than having to wait patiently for your SEO to build up, you can pay for the chance to get page-one visibility on Google immediately.

For more on the benefits of organic search and Google Ads, click here.