Pay Per Click (PPC) listings are found above and to the right of the natural listings. The listings are usually a different colour and have the title “Sponsored Links”.
A fee is charged every time a user clicks on a PPC link. You don’t pay for the number of people that see your ad, but only when someone physically clicks on the link. As a result, PPC is extremely cost-effective for increasing brand-awareness.
PPC is beneficial to new companies or websites who want to build a large online presence quickly, or established companies looking to run a short-term promotion (e.g. for Christmas, or a once-off sale).
Google Adwords use a ‘quality score’ based on the popularity of an individual ad. An ad that does not experience a lot of ‘click-throughs’ may not make it to the top of the paid listings results.
