Most search engines have two types of listings on SERPs, organic listings and sponsored listings. The difference may not seem dramatic, but these differences are critical to who will actually click on a site.           

Organic Listings are the listings that the search engine finds and produces in the results page. These listings are posted free of charge to the website. The goal of any search engine is to provide a useful surfing experience to their users. After all, search engines are businesses and the search experience is their product. These listings are the bulk of what users see on search engine results pages. Most people, about 70%, will click on an organic listing when using a search engine. This figure can be even higher, depending on the search engine. People tend to trust organic listings more. After all, not all sponsored links relate to exactly what a person is looking for. Organic listings will show all pages related to that specific topic, not just the ones that have something to sell.           

Sponsored listings, on the other hand, are websites which have paid Google for their prominent display on a SERP. Since the majority of search engine users click on organic listings, why would anyone want to pay for a sponsored listing? Consider this: the search for “kittens” yielded 15 million listings. There might be millions of pages that use the same keywords and relate to the same topics. A sponsored link is a way to spread the word about a site and get more visitors, especially if that site is lower down on the search engine’s ranking for a particular keyword.