There have been a few negative reports of the adwords PPC (pay per click) traffic declining. The economist has taken this as beginning of the end for search engine giant, Google. Even our own SEO team have been citing the competition of social media sites drawing traffic away from search engines, and more specifically sponsored links.

I for one see this negativity as scare mongering. Admittedly the growth of sponsored link traffic may have slowed and even reached a plateau for a short while. The complete stats for the first quarter of 2008 show a 3% increase. A positive growth, not a decline and there are far too many external factors to consider before sounding the death knell of PPC.

In the current economic climate the trend of general consumer spending has been declining, and for a marketing platform that is so well placed to target consumer sale PPC and sponsored links are sure to waver.

Sponsored links, as with all forms advertising , are tied very closely to consumer spending. If people are not looking to buy then why would they pay attention to, or use advertising.

Traffic on the internet will continue to increase, that will include search engines, social media, commerce and entertainment sites, but unless those users are looking to spend, it is likely that sponsored link and ad words traffic will appear as less of a proportion traffic as a whole. When the public confidence returns and people get back on the internet with their credit cards sponsored links are sure to gather a higher proportion of traffic again.

In the mean time, using pay per click marketing should be managed appropriately and in line with the returns available. After all one of the worst offenders for reducing the traffic through pay per click ads will be poorly targeted ads that create the belief that the links are not relevant to the search made. The only real way to profit from pay per click advertising is serving relevant ads to those who are interested.

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