Paid and organic search together: where ads add clicks and where they replace free ones

Google Ads reports what the ads did. Search Console reports what the free listings did. Both describe the same results page, often the same search by the same person, and neither knows about the other.

So each looks good on its own. The ads show clicks and conversions. Search Console shows clicks too. The question neither answers alone is the one that decides the budget: how many of the ad clicks would have come anyway, through the organic result just below?

Organic clicks and impressions

From Search Console. An impression is your page shown in Google's free results. Clicks on links inside an AI Overview or AI Mode count as clicks.

Average position

From Search Console. The topmost position your site held for a search, averaged over its impressions. An AI Overview takes one position, shared by its links.

Organic CTR

Organic clicks divided by organic impressions. It falls when ads, shopping results or an AI Overview sit above you.

Paid clicks and search terms

From Google Ads. The search terms report lists what people typed when your ads showed, minus searches too rare to show.

Search Console also leaves out rare queries from its query table, for privacy. Its totals include them, so the rows never add up to the total. Expect the same in Google Ads: both reports are large samples, not complete lists.

Ad position and organic position do not compare. Google Ads describes ad placement with top and absolute top impression rates. Search Console's position counts organic slots, and ads sit above or around them.

Export the last 90 days of queries from Search Console and of search terms from Google Ads, for the same country. The Search Console interface exports up to 1,000 rows; its API or bulk export gives more.

Lowercase and trim both lists, then join them on the exact text. Both hold the words people actually typed, so the join works without guessing at match types. Each search then falls into one of four groups.

The second group is where money moves. It is usually small in count and large in spend, because it holds your brand and your best-ranked product names.

The only way to know what an ad adds is to watch total clicks with and without it. The two formulas below need a period with ads and a comparable period, or region, without them.

Corvel Bikes, a made-up bike shop, ran its brand ads for four weeks, then paused them for four weeks in a quiet stretch of the season.

Three in four of Corvel's brand ad clicks would have come for free. Yet each extra click still costs only €0.93, less than the generic search. Whether brand ads pay is decided by that cost against what a visit is worth, not by the share alone.

Run the test with care. Compare the same weekdays and a similar season, or pause in half of the regions and keep the other half as the control. Watch conversions as well as clicks. And look at who takes the top slot when you leave: if a competitor does, the organic result may lose more than the test window shows.

See incrementality for the wider idea, and the free brand term finder to list the searches that count as brand.

Brand is where paid and organic overlap most, and where the test above pays back fastest. Filter Search Console's queries on your brand name with its regular expression filter, so brand and non-brand organic clicks are read apart.

Some reasons to keep a brand campaign running whatever the test says:

• Competitors bid on your name. Without your ad, theirs sits above your organic result.
• Resellers or affiliates bid on it and send buyers to a page you do not control.
• The page above the fold is crowded. Shopping results, maps or an AI Overview push the organic link down.

Performance Max can also buy your brand searches. Brand exclusions keep it off them, as the Performance Max and brand guide explains.

Google Ads has a predefined paid and organic report. It needs a Search Console property linked to the Google Ads account, and it is updated once a day. Its help page was still current when we checked on 14 October 2026.

It shows, search by search, whether your ad showed, your organic listing showed, or both. Its organic metrics include organic queries, organic clicks per query and organic listings per query.

• Text ads only. Shopping ads and click-to-download ads are not counted.
• Nothing before the link. The report stays empty until a Search Console property for the site is linked to the account.
• No answer on incrementality. It shows the overlap, not what would happen without the ad. That still takes the test above.

It is the quickest way to find the second group of the overlap table. Use it as a starting list, then measure.

• Time zones. Search Console reports days in Pacific Time. Google Ads uses the account's time zone. Daily rows shift, so compare weeks or months.
• Recent days. Search Console's last two or three days arrive late. Leave them out.
• Filters that do not match. A Search Console view for all countries against a campaign aimed at one is no comparison. Match country and device first.

Clicks in Search Console are not GA4's organic sessions either. A click is counted when it happens. A session needs the page to load, and consent to be given in some setups.

• Average position across many searches. One position of 4.2 can hide 1 on brand and 9 on everything else. Read it per search.
• Seasons. A brand test in December against a November without ads measures Christmas, not the ads.

In Optizads, Search Console is connected per ad account, read only, and you choose one site. It brings four metrics: Organic clicks, Organic impressions, Organic CTR and Average position. Average position is weighted by impressions, as Search Console weights it, and up to 16 months of history are read on connect. The last 35 days are read again each night, since Search Console's latest days arrive late.

These figures cover the whole site. When a view is narrowed to one campaign type, they are left out rather than misread as belonging to it.

They sit beside the Google Ads figures on the Overview's metric cards, and in a report's Key figures and Performance chart, through the report builder. Any built-in metric can carry a goal, so a monthly goal for organic clicks works like one for conversions. A Calculated metric such as Organic clicks ÷ Clicks follows the balance between the two over time.

Search ConsoleOptizads

• Organic clicks and impressions
• Your position
• The searches

One limit, stated plainly: no card lines up Search Console queries against search terms row by row. The overlap table above is still a spreadsheet job. For the paid side, the search terms report template lists the searches that convert and those that waste.

The data and metrics page explains how each source is read, and the metric pages for average position and organic CTR say how to read them.