Google has confirmed it’s doing an experiment to test displaying click counts for paid search advertisements. Certain AdWord advertisements would have different click counts displayed below their company’s URL. For example, Google was testing one display that simply showed the number of clicks, such as 10,000 clicks. A sample of this display can be seen in the image below.
Another display being tested is the one shown below, which is the number of clicks followed by “for this advertiser”.
If a click count like this is officially incorporated into paid advertisements, what will this mean for your company and web users searching for your products or services?
Simply put, we think a higher click count would compel more web searchers to click on your advertisement. This higher click count could also support the relevance of your website for the keywords searched that triggered your advertisement. This would help your company in two ways. First, it would help your company’s SEO ranking on Google because relevance is one of the ranking factors. Second, it might increase traffic going to your site because those web searchers might take that higher click count to mean that you have relevant products or services based on what they are searching for.
In the future, if Google does incorporate a display of click counts, then you will need to make sure you know how to use this to better optimize your pay per click advertising campaign. The one main benefit we see from the display count is that your company will be able to take that information in order to better adjust your company’s CPC, or cost per click. For example, if your company saw a higher click count number under your advertisement, then you would be able to reduce your CPC based on that data. On the other hand, your company might see that for a certain keyword searched that triggers your advertisement, you have a low click count number. You can then take that to mean that you should consider changing your keyword to better optimize your click count number so that more targeted traffic will see your advertisement and click through to your website.
Google’s testing of this display of click counts on paid search advertisements is an interesting inquiry and if officially implemented will be certain to have effects and provoke changes not only in company’s pay per click campaigns but also in your search engine optimization strategies.