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When shopping for your favourite products using Google, do you the take time to search further than the first page of results? Would you be less tempted to click on sponsored links rather than organic results? If you answered no to either of these questions, then you could be losing money.

Our study found that for almost 50% of products, a cheaper price can be found by clicking on Google advertisements.

Not only can money be saved by clicking on the paid advertisements, but searching beyond the first page of Google search results can also bring about savings. In fact, the best deals could be found as far down as the fourth page of the search results.

The findings from this research are based on an analysis of 880 search results over a range of electronics, clothing and consumer product queries. Our experts searched for a range of popular products and compared the prices on both paid and organic listings. For example, when searching for a particular kitchen appliance – the ‘Hotpoint RLA36G undercounter fridge’ – we analysed all of the listings on the first 4 pages of results, documenting the various prices offered on both organic and paid results to find out which of the two offered the best deals.

Product Lowest Price
on Ads
Lowest Price
on Organic
Panasonic TX-42A400B £299.39 £349.00
Cannon 550d £269.00 £269.00
Samsung UE48H5030 £399.00 £399.00
Xbox one £324.85 £329.00
Microsoft Surface Pro 3 12" Tablet – 64 GB £564.99 £639.00
Apple iPod touch 5th generation 16GB £159.00 £136.00
Dyson dc50 animal buy uk £259.99 £299.99
Hotpoint RLA36G undercounter fridge £178.97 £178.97
Marc Jacobs Daisy Dream Eau De Toilette 30 ml £32.99 £31.50
Manchester United 2014 home shirt ages 10-12 £34.99 £34.99
Benefit BADgal mascara £14.46 £14.46
Sandqvist Stig backpack £85.58 £90.00

 
From the table above, we can see that consumers could save more than £74 on a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 12″ tablet 64GB by reviewing both the advertisers and organic listings before making a decision. The same can be applied to numerous other products, where paid advertisements are easily offering the best deal on the web.

The infographic below illustrates this and more findings from our research:

Organic v Paid Shopping