Google's John Mueller was asked if removing Google Ads and stopping paying Google for search ads would help your site rank better in the organic free listings. John said no, they are not related and what you do or do not do on Google Ads has no influence on your Google Search organic rankings.
This came up in a video at the 28:35 mark where Vinyas Gowda said he had a number one ranking in Google Search and then put up Google Ads. After the Google Ads went live, the organic free listings dropped in Google Search. Then they removed the Google Ads and the rankings came back.
In short, he is asking if running Google Ads hurts your organic rankings.
John Mueller of Google said no, organic rankings are not related to Google Ads and the "systems are completely separate" he added. John said he often gets the question the other way, where your organic rankings improve when you run ads. He said both are unrelated and not true.
John added that Google "works really hard to differentiate Ads and Search, so much so that even when large advertisers go to their account manager and they have a small search question, we push back on that and we don’t give any answers."
Here is the video embed:
This topic is not new, we wrote about the reverse, where buying ads do not help you rank higher either. Here is one from 2021 and in 2014, we reported something similar where someone said they got in a fight with their ad rep and his rankings dropped. But in 2015, a Google Ads rep said it doesn't work like that and in 2012, Matt Cutts said nope in this video as well:
Forum discussion at the YouTube Community.
This post was pre-written and scheduled to be automatically posted today, I am offline for a holiday and unable to respond to comments or questions until late Tuesday night.
