We were doing a PPC audit for a home security reseller and noticed that the #1 paid spot has 4 site links below the ad.
We’ve always known that you can get up to 8 site links if you’re the #1 search result and have sufficient authority. But to see these in paid search? Note that the 4 links under the paid ad don’t seem to correlate with the organic links. Does anyone have experience with this?
Do the urls have to be the same– such that if adt.com is the #1 organic result, then their paid ad gets extra links if it’s also #1? If so, that would create a significant incentive to bid to the first position, which would already increase the frenzy for folks who just want to be in the first spot, regardless of ROI.
Have you seen this in other ads? Please let me know and I’ll be happy to post your experience here.
Overall, seems like Google is allocating more and more space to paid search results and less on organic. For those folks who have relied only on SEO– whether enterprise clients or local businesses that have counted on traffic from their local 10-pack listings– watch out!