What is Paid Ranking?
With so-called paid ranking, placements in organic search results can be purchased. The purchased rankings cannot be directly distinguished from organically displayed search results. Visually, they look as if they are ordinary search results that have been selected by the algorithm. Paid ranking is not currently offered in well-known and popular search engines. Only very small search engines try to generate revenue by offering paid ranking.
Quality of the page not relevant for paid ranking
The reason why large and established search engines such as Google do not offer paid ranking is obvious. When buying a position in the top results, paid ranking does not take into account whether the quality of the page matches the other organic search results at all. This can severely limit the user-friendliness of users who are looking for quality search results. Users can also be misled, as it is not obvious that a page has bought itself a position in the first SERGs. Paid ranking may well land you on a page that offers little added value or inferior products. Because of this problem, very few search engines even offer the option of buying a ranking. If established search engines such as Google were to introduce such a system, in which no difference could be visually recognized in purchased search results, there would be plenty of criticism.
Buy Paid Ranking
Website operators who are interested in paid ranking can buy positions in the search results for selected keywords in any auctions. The site owner who places the highest bid for a particular position in the search engine also gets the best position. With paid ranking, you pay per click. In practice, this means that you always pay when a user reaches your website via the ad. The prices for search engine positions always depend on the popularity of the keywords. If you want to buy a top position for a very popular keyword, you will have to dig deeper into your pockets than for a very unusual niche keyword.
What does Paid Ranking cost?
The costs for paid ranking always depend on the popularity of the respective search engine and the keyword. For website operators, it must always be considered individually whether paid ranking is really worthwhile. As this advertising method is paid per click, the website must convince the customer. If the customer simply leaves without buying a product or using a service, Paid Ranking can quickly become a pointless advertising expense for site operators.
Does Google offer paid ranking?
Classic paid ranking distorts the organic search results and users are sometimes misled. This is why Google, the world’s largest and most popular search engine, does not offer a real paid ranking. Google Ads can be used to buy top positions in search results, but these are then marked as such. They are displayed before the organic search results and are then also highlighted and marked in color.
