Click or No Click, Google Says Paid Search Pays

Position matters in paid search, according to Google.

The search engine released findings of custom research performed by Millward Brown on its behalf. And Sprint was the guinea pig in this project.

The goal was to determine the value of an impression beyond the click, measure the impact of paid search ads, and find out how much search placement matters.

Brand recall was greater in the top-sponsored position, and was reduced in lower positions, the study found. You don’t even need a click to increase branding. “When you get a search impression, it’s free,” a tech commerce marketing manager at Google told me. “It’s an expanded way to use search in strategy.”

The research reinforced a conversation I had with another Google executive. In a recent interview, Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, said on any given day Google is conducting around 150 to 200 experiments worldwide. To hear about the study and how the team tested search engine results pages (SERP) with sponsored links from Sprint high on the page, or not there at all, is just another example of how the Google continues to tune its engine.