Sponsored links (sometimes called sponsored results) are listings or advertisements in a search engine’s results.

Typically, there are two types of listings when you type a keyword into a search engine’s results page; organic listings and paid listings.

Organic listings
Organic listings are results that are shown naturally by a search engine’s ranking algorithm. These results are determined by the search engines and cannot be manipulated by paying money to search engines to show your website above others. This process is done automatically by the search engine’s ranking algorithm.

Sponsored links
Paid listings or sponsored listings are the advertisements placed within right column and across the top column of a search engine’s results page. These advertisements are displayed in conjunction with organic results and work on a bid system and quality score environment. Advertisers bid on keywords and the price they pay per click depends on factors such as the keywords, the quality of the advertisement, the quality of the landing page and the clickthrough rate of the ad.

Search engines display sponsored links advertising using contextual advertising methods. When a user goes to a search engine and types in a keyword term, a search engine’s sponsored results software will go through its network of advertisements and display sponsored ads that are contextually relevant with the keyword term that the user typed. For example, if a user typed ‘internet advertising agency’ into a search box, the search engine would display organic results for this term along with advertisements of people who have chosen this term when purchasinge pay per click advertising.

Sponsored links are usually always clearly distinguished as paid advertisements so that people do not confuse organic results with paid results. Most search engines take the same approach to paid search listings as they do with organic or natural listings:-

• Ads must be relevant to the keyword search conducted.
• Ads must be subtle and not intrude, distract, or annoy (no pop-up or flashy ads).
• Sponsored advertising links are clearly identified and kept separate from search results.

Advertisers decide on what keyword terms they would like their ads to show for and then the search engine decides on the placement of the sponsored advertisement. The order or placement of the sponsored link can be determined by quite a few factors, one of which is the clickthrough rate of the advertisement. If a sponsored link is clicked on regularly for a particular term, a search engine will think that advertisement is relevant for that particular keyword term and move it up in the list of sponsored ads that are shown. If the sponsored advertisement is not clicked, then that ad must not be relevant for the result and will be moved down in the list until eventually it is bumped off the first page.