How Google’s Design is Dictated by Dollars [Infographic]

You need money. So does everyone else – it’s not news. But what might be news is the extent to which Google will go to extract maximum profits from advertisers. Most of the search giant’s income is driven by ads on its display and search network.

According to research by GroupM and Nielson, paid search accounts for 6 percent of total clicks from search engines. Organic results account for 94 percent of total clicks. That would lead the casual observer to conclude that paid search isn’t worth much. But, consider this: Google won’t make money from free clicks.

It wants display advertising on websites to be successful, since it knows that most of its clicks are going to organic results. So, even if your client doesn’t use display advertising, you still have to contend with the idea that perhaps Google is telling you something about how it wants to rank websites by the way it derives substantially all of its revenue.

Google authorship is another important way to work with Google to maximise profits for you and your client without being relegated to pay-per-click land. Studies show an increase in CTRs of about 35 percent for search results that use authorship images and rich snippets.

And, last but not least, there’s the nature of the listing in the results pages. Is your company (or your client’s) branded “enough?”