A member of the search community alleged in a tweet that his client was explicitly told by Google that spending more on per click (PPC) advertising would improve their organic search rankings.
The accusation was shocking to many in Twitter as Google has long insisted that using their ad has no direct impact on organic rankings.
Google’s policy on advertising and search
Google has long ensured that there is a firewall between the paid side and the organic side and that the two sides do not communicate.
Solicitation started with Google
Because Google maintained this separation between the paid and organic sides of Google’s search market, a customer had to petition Google’s PPC sales to increase its spending to increase its ranking.
Google Advertising Customer “Shakedown”
word “Search“Has many meanings, including extortion. Extortion means the payment of something by force to someone. It is a term that denotes corruption.”
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Ruthlessly, the term shakedown imagines someone grabbing them by the heels and taking money out of their pocket.
“I’m not sure yet how to process the fact that Google did a shakedown of one of our customers. In short, they were asked to spend more on paid advertisements to improve organic search * for their brand name. * “
“For a long time, those of us who were active in SEO knew that Google would do it, but Google always denied it.
It really struck him differently to see him saying it out loud. “
The person says that this is not a misunderstanding
Naturally (and reasonably), some asked if it was possible that it was a miscommunication.
Is this of if you increase brand exposure through advertising, there may be a version of misinformation, more people can search for the brand and improve their results’?
– Amon Johnso (@Ammon_Johns) January 7, 2021
The person reporting the alleged incident did not have an answer, stating that it was not misinformation.
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He said the alleged request from the Google seller was unclear. He said that the Google ad vendor had clearly linked the improvement in organic rankings to the increase in ad spend.
It was not just something that was allegedly communicated either verbally. The person who recalled the alleged incident said that the Google seller put it in writing in an email.
“Luckily, our client sent the email with a” holy cow, I can’t believe they could put it in writing. ” What do you think? “
We have sophisticated and smart customers. “
Again Later in twitter thread:
“When I say I believe I need to say that it was very quiet. I don’t want to be more specific in public right now, while I want to see if it’s news or not.”
Google’s Danny Sullivan Interventions
Perhaps no one worried more than Danny Sullivan.
He stayed in the discussion To tweet a response:
“Advertising expenses will not increase your SEO. Surely. And if you want to give me DM information, I’ll follow up with the @GoogleAds team to see why it was said. Because it should never be said, because it doesn’t work that way at all. “
Someone responded that PPC should not take advantage of organic to sell more advertising.
Glad you have clarified Danny, but it really should be addressed. Advertisements may not be allowed to be used as leverage to sell, especially now that businesses have no money to spend
– Dara McGann (@darasRantings) January 7, 2021
Danny Sullivan of Google confirmed that he had already taken action.
“It will be addressed. I have already sent a few emails about it. I’m guessing that maybe the rep is referring to some studies that I remember that sometimes, users may click more on ads or unpaid search results when both are present. Which is not a way to boost SEO ranking… ”
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In response to someone else, Danny replied:
It is very easy to solve. If one of our advertising representatives is saying so, I hope they get a very firm reminder of what they should never say. I also hope that they have already said never to say something, as all Googlers are told.
– Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 7, 2021
The discussion ended quietly with the original poster confirming Danny contacted him.
After this to the people, I have confirmed that Danny has reached out via DM. Also I should maintain customer privacy.
– Melinda Barele (@MJB_SF) January 7, 2021
Google PPC and Organic Search Separation
Google was originally an ad-free service. This helped Google gain popularity as other search engines were spoiled with banner ads, giving the user a poor experience.
So when Google finally introduced the advertisement, they pledged that the advertising side would never affect organic search rankings.
Over the years Google has been accused of coordinating with the paid search side to show poor search results to encourage more ad clicks, they were generally the cornerstones of search marketing, ideas from baseless conspiracy theories .
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Most people in that Twitter discussion believed that the alleged incident was not a normal incident. Read the twitter discussion here.