How Google AdWords Sitelinks Impacts Organic Traffic

Dec 9, 2010 - 8:58 am 3 by
Filed Under Google Ads

SEOmoz has a nice case study of the impact of turning on your AdWords Sitelinks in Google.

Google added Sitelinks to AdWords back in November of last year, here is how they look:

AdWords Ad Sitelinks

So what happens to your traffic when you activate the AdWords Sitelinks when you already have the number one organic listing in Google?

The SEOmoz post has one case study. Here is a table he shared with the impact:

Visits Without Sitelinks With Sitelinks Change Change %
Total Visits 146,922 148,382 1,460 0.99%
AdWords Visits 32,248 61,740 29,492 91.45%
Organic Visits 114,674 86,842 -27,832 -24.27%

As you can see, adding in the AdWords Sitelinks pretty much didn't end up sending that much more traffic to the site with the already good organic ranking. But if you do not rank well organically, then it does take a away a lot from that top listing and boost your traffic significantly.

There is more graphs and data in the SEOmoz post.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Google Search Volatility

More Details

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Updates

Google Search Ranking Volatility This Weekend - Around July 18th

Jul 19, 2026 - 8:04 am
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 17, 2026

Jul 17, 2026 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google 7/11 Update, Bing Penalties, Google Images, AI Overviews AI Images, Google Ads Updates, ChatGPT Ads Features & Apple Maps

Jul 17, 2026 - 8:01 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Making Broader Smart Bidding Updates? Google Says No.

Jul 17, 2026 - 7:51 am
Google Maps

Did Google Maps Turn Off OpenTable Reservations?

Jul 17, 2026 - 7:41 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Renamed NotebookLM Useragent To Google-GeminiNotebook

Jul 17, 2026 - 7:31 am
 
Previous Story: Google Image Search Updating Index Within Days