Will Google Rank My Site Higher If I Participate in Adwords or AdSense?

One of the questions that many website developers ask frequently is whether or not Google ranks a website higher in their indexes for either having an AdWords campaign or if their site participates in AdSense. Before I answer this question, it is important to know what these two items are.

Google AdWords is the pay per click contextual advertising that many companies purchase to advertise their site on Google’s search engine. When a person inputs a keyword or keyword phrase into Google’s search box, not only do relevant sites come up, but pay per click text box advertising is also viewable on the right hand side.

Google AdSense is an advertisement program where web developers and web publishers can get paid for showing text box advertising on their website, blogs, etc.

Regarding the above question: the answer is No!

There is no evidence to suggest that Google will rank your website, webpage, blog, etc higher in their index because you either have a pay per click campaign using AdWords or partner with Google AdSense to advertise on your website. In fact, Google has made it quite clear that its index rankings are a direct result of its commitment to deliver the most relevant results to its users. While there are many website owners that swear having a pay per click campaign or being a part of AdSense has helped them with ranking higher, there has been no empirical proof. In fact, you will find just as many web developers that are part of these programs with rankings in the basement.

In addition, if Google was ranking sites that advertise higher in the index rankings there would definitely be a major outcry. One of the many reasons that Google grew so fast in its early days was that search engines such as Yahoo! were mixing advertised links within their natural search results. Users were unable to differentiate which items were natural results and paid results. Many Yahoo! users flocked to Google who easily differentiated advertisements from natural results. To this day, paid results on Google are specifically stated and are primarily found on the right hand side.

Therefore, for web developers and company owners, you should not base your decision to join AdWords or AdSense purely on whether it will help your rankings.