Integrated search glossary

Paid and organic overlap

Paid and organic overlap is what happens when a brand's paid search ad and its organic listing appear for the same search. The key question is how many of the ad's clicks are incremental, and how many would have arrived through the organic result anyway if the ad had not run.

Reviewed by Gareth Hoyle, Managing Director
Last reviewed 31 October 2026

What did Google's research find?

In July 2011 Google researchers David Chan and Lizzy Van Alstine reported on more than 400 studies of advertisers who paused their search ads. On average, 89% of the clicks the ads had been generating were not replaced by organic clicks.

A March 2012 follow-up analysed 390 of these studies by organic position. When the advertiser's organic result ranked first, 50% of ad clicks were incremental. At positions 2 to 4 the figure was 82%, and at position 5 or lower it was 96%. It also found that 81% of ad impressions occurred with no organic result for the advertiser on the first page.

These figures come from Google, which sells the ads, measure clicks rather than conversions and predate AI Overviews. They are a starting point, not a forecast for any one account.

How to measure overlap in your own account

Brand searches, where the organic result is usually first, are where overlap is highest.

Link Search Console to Google Ads to use the paid and organic report, which covers text ads only
Find queries with organic clicks but no ads, and test ads on the valuable ones
Find queries where both appear and test pausing ads by region or period
Judge results on combined paid and organic clicks and conversions, not paid alone

Example

A hotel group ranks first organically for its own name. It pauses brand ads in half its markets for a month and finds that combined bookings fall slightly, while a competitor's ad takes the top slot. Whether to keep the brand ads then becomes a costed decision rather than a habit.