Search 101: being found at the moment people ask

Search is the discipline of being found when someone types or speaks a question. It has two halves. SEO (search engine optimisation) works on a site so that it earns a place in the free, or "organic", results. Paid search (also called search engine advertising, SEA, or pay-per-click) buys a place in the ads shown beside or above those results. Both answer the same query, so in an integrated plan they share keywords, pages and measurement.

• What it is: answering demand that already exists, at the moment it is expressed.
• Who runs it: the search engines (Google, Microsoft Bing and others) set the rules; the advertiser or publisher controls its own pages and ads.
• Reach: anyone online; DataReportal counted 6.04 billion internet users in October 2025¹⁶.
• How it is priced: SEO costs work, not placement, because Google does not sell crawling, indexing or ranking¹; paid search is mostly sold per click through an auction⁵.
• Best for: lead generation, conversion and capturing interest that other disciplines create.
• Weak for: creating demand from nothing; people search for what they already know about.
• As of: October 2026.

Organic search happens in three stages, and not every page makes it through each one¹:

SEO is the work that helps each stage: a site the crawler can reach, pages that clearly answer a question, and a reputation that makes the engine trust them. Google states that it does not guarantee it will crawl, index or show any page¹.

In 2026 the results page often begins with an AI Overview, a generated summary with links to its sources, and Google also offers AI Mode, a conversational search for comparisons and exploration. Google says these features may run several related searches on subtopics at once (it calls this "query fan-out") and that there are no extra requirements or special optimisations needed to appear in them beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet².

Paid search runs an auction every time an ad could appear. The advertiser chooses keywords, writes ads and sets a maximum bid per click (CPC, cost per click). Google computes an Ad Rank for each eligible ad from the bid, the ad's quality at auction time (expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance and landing page experience), the Ad Rank thresholds, the competitiveness of the auction, the context of the search and the expected impact of ad assets⁵. Higher-quality ads can often pay less per click⁴.

Quality Score is the advertiser's report card for the same ideas: a rating built from expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance and landing page experience, each marked above average, average or below average against other advertisers on the same keyword over the last 90 days³. Google presents it as a guide to what to improve, not a number to chase³.

Paid search grew out of the idea that a query is a statement of intent. Google launched AdWords, its self-service keyword advertising programme, in October 2000⁶. As search ads spread, regulators asked engines to keep them distinct from results: the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) first issued guidance in 2002 and its staff updated it in June 2013 after seeing compliance decline¹⁴.

The last few years changed both halves. In March 2024 Google added spam policies aimed at mass-produced, low-value pages¹². In March 2025 the European Commission told Alphabet that Google Search appeared to favour its own services under the Digital Markets Act¹⁵. In May 2025 Google took AI Overviews to more than 200 countries and territories¹⁰, and in September 2025 a US court ordered remedies in the government's search monopoly case¹³.

Search is used wherever people are online, and its money is concentrated in a few markets. In the United States, the IAB and PwC put search advertising at $102.9 billion in 2024, 39.8% of all internet advertising revenue, after growth of 15.9%⁷. For 2025 their figure is $114.2 billion, or 38.8%, with growth slowing to 11%⁸.

• Americas: the United States is the largest single search ad market measured by the IAB⁷, and its courts and regulators set many of the rules that engines then apply elsewhere¹³¹⁴.
• Europe: Google Search is regulated as a gatekeeper service under the Digital Markets Act, which requires fair and non-discriminatory ranking¹⁵.
• Middle East and Africa: when Google widened AI Overviews in May 2025 it added Arabic among the new languages¹⁰, so Arabic queries now get the same AI answers as English ones.
• Asia-Pacific: Google named India, with the United States, among its biggest markets for AI Overviews in May 2025¹¹.

Engines differ by country, and so do the share of searches on mobile and the language mix; check each market's own data before you plan.

• Lead generation and customer acquisition: capturing people who search for the problem you solve, common in B2B software and professional services.
• Conversion: product and shopping queries for retail and e-commerce and bookings for hospitality and travel.
• Product launches and market entry: paid search covers the new name from day one while organic rankings build.
• Defending the brand name: people who search for your brand are often responding to advertising, PR or word of mouth elsewhere; search is where that interest is collected.
• Reading demand: what people type is free market research for the rest of the integrated plan.

SEO. There is no fee to the engine: Google does not sell crawling, indexing or ranking¹. The cost is people and time: content, technical work on the site, and earning links and mentions.

Paid search. Most search ads are bought per click. The advertiser sets a maximum CPC; the actual CPC is usually lower, because you pay only what is needed to clear the Ad Rank thresholds and beat the advertiser just below you, or a reserve price if nobody is below⁵. The actual CPC can exceed the maximum when automated bidding or bid adjustments are switched on⁵. Thresholds, and so prices, are typically higher for ads shown above the results than below them⁴.

There is no public rate card: prices are set auction by auction. What you control is the quality side. A better ad and a better landing page raise Ad Rank and can lower the price⁴, which is why paid search rewards the same work as SEO. Track cost per acquisition (CPA) and return on ad spend (ROAS), not clicks.

This is a summary, not legal advice.

• Ads must look like ads. The FTC's staff told search engines to distinguish any paid placement clearly and prominently from natural results, with visible shading, borders and labels, and said the principle applies to new formats such as voice search and apps¹⁴.
• Competition law. In the United States, the court barred Google from exclusive distribution deals covering Search, Chrome, Google Assistant and the Gemini app, and required it to share some search index and interaction data with rivals; the Justice Department says the remedies extend to generative AI products¹³. In the EU, the Commission's preliminary view is that Google Search ranks its own shopping, travel, financial and sports services more favourably than rivals', against Article 6(5) of the Digital Markets Act¹⁵.
• Platform policy. Google's spam policies can demote or remove sites that publish pages at scale mainly to manipulate rankings, or that host low-quality third-party content to borrow a domain's reputation¹².
• Data and consent. Paid search measurement relies on tags on your own site; data protection and cookie rules apply to them in each country, as for any tracking.

• Fewer clicks after AI answers. Pew Research Center studied the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025: 58% saw at least one AI summary, and users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits with a summary against 15% without one; links inside the summary were clicked on 1% of visits⁹. Traffic is not a stable measure of SEO success any more.
• Search harvests, it does not create. People search for brands and categories they already know. Cutting brand-building to fund search can shrink the demand search depends on.
• Brand terms flatter the numbers. Many brand-name clicks would have arrived anyway; test with incrementality experiments rather than trusting last-click attribution.
• Chasing the score. Quality Score is a diagnosis, not a target³.
• Shortcuts backfire. Mass-produced pages and borrowed domains are exactly what Google's spam policies target¹².

• More AI in the results. Google has already taken AI Overviews to more than 200 countries and territories and over 40 languages¹⁰, reported 1.5 billion monthly users for them in May 2025¹¹, and says pages need no special optimisation to appear in its AI features².
• Ads in conversations. Microsoft has introduced conversational ad experiences around its Copilot assistant¹⁷; ads inside AI answers are becoming a format to plan for.
• Competition remedies in force. The US remedies reach generative AI products¹³, and the EU's Digital Markets Act proceedings on Google Search continue¹⁵.
• Slower growth. US search ad revenue still grew in 2025, but at 11% rather than 15.9%⁷⁸.

Choose search when demand exists and the goal is a measurable action: a lead, a sale, a booking. Pair it with disciplines that create demand, such as digital advertising and content, and measure it with the methods in measuring effectiveness, using your own first-party data. See the search discipline page and which mix for which objective.