Free Ads on Google?

by Charles Pobee-Mensah, Director of Digital Marketing

Did you know that according to one study, almost 60% of people don’t recognize Google Paid Ads when they see them? That means that many people are going to treat your free “organic” search result no different than they’d treat one that you paid for.

But when you pay for ads on Google, you get to choose exactly what it says. The headline, the description, even the ending part of the URL. But what about the free one?

Well, on most platforms, you can actually write up headlines, descriptions, and URLs on your website for Google to show. And most of the time, they’ll show it just the way you wrote it! This is part of what’s called “metadata” on your website. It’s kinda like getting an ad for free. 

If you leave this blank, then Google’s algorithm is going to try and pull words from the page to put together a description, but people will be much more likely to click on your website if a human writes a well-written headline and description for the page instead of relying on a robot to do it for them. And the more clicks you get, the more likely it is that Google will show your “free ad” even more!