Study demonstrates that a trusted brand is a prerequisite for organic and paid search

You can flood the market with paid search ads or dump money into SEO to rank on page one, but if you want people to click, you need them to trust you; the way you build trust is by building a trusted brand

In December of 2023, I fell for a scam published on Google Ads. I was looking for a deal to restart my subscription to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and found an enticing one for 90% off.

Google ads are paid ads, not organic search results and appear at the top of every search. You can buy ads, but you can’t buy organic search results.  While Google does impose some quality controls on paid ads, the fact is the payment probably counts for more, at least from my perspective as a searcher.

It was a no-brainer. I whipped out my credit card and ordered it.

I received an email order confirmation right away and that’s when I knew I was scammed. The confirmation asked me to reply to the email to get my password. I called the WSJ support line instead, learned it was a scam, and called my credit card company to report the fraud.

A lapse in judgment plus brand authority

In hindsight, there were plenty of warning signs. If you look at the screenshot nearby, the URL is clearly off.

Usually, I’m hypersensitive about security, both physical and online. I’ve done a ton of PR work in cybersecurity which has given me a window into the threats. My work in marketing has introduced me to the insane level of online tracking surveillance that businesses use.

I’ve also spent 23 years wearing a U.S. uniform, in the Guard and Reserve. While I’ve mostly worked on the kinetic side, I’ve seen firsthand how we integrate cyber warfare to shape the conditions we need in an area of operations – and have had a glimpse of how bad actors do too.

It was a momentary lapse of judgment, but perhaps prompted in combination with brand trust. The WSJ and Google brands are both generally trustworthy from my perspective. That’s a new take on that incident I have after reading about this survey by Page One Power.

Brand and trust in search

Page One Power surveyed 1,000 Americans to understand the impact of brand and trust in search results. Among the findings was this nugget:

“59% of Americans click results from brands they know, while less than one-third choose the top-ranked result. That means users are twice as likely to trust brand recognition over algorithms — perhaps a response to growing skepticism toward search engines.”

Zero-click searches are on of the biggest problems in search marketing today, so this helps, yet there is divergence on what prompts them to click:

“Baby boomers (50%) and Gen X (52%) are drawn to compelling headlines, while millennials (55%) and Gen Z (63%) favor high star ratings and positive reviews, showing that younger generations rely more on social proof when searching.”

I was raised latch-key kid, so the compelling headline certainly speaks to me.

Danny Goodwin, who writes for Search Engine Land where I first spotted the study, summed it up this way:

“Trust remains critical for brands in SEO. Yes, ‘build a brand’ has become a cliche, but it’s also true. You need to build a brand that your audience recognizes and connects with.”

Goodwin also noted the differences between paid and organic search results:

“49% of Americans trust organic search results more than paid results, while another 46% trust organic and paid results equally. Only 5% trust paid results more than organic.”

And then he spelled out these statistics:

• “54% of men and 56% of Millennials trust organic search results more.”
• “50% of women and 52% of Gen X trust organic and paid results equally.”

Performance marketing and brand

Although I there’s a credible argument to be made that paid search ads contribute to brand, I generally put search ads into the “performance marketing” category. This is because you can measure the performance, as conveyed by clicks and make adjustments as you go.

By contrast, brand-building activities, including PR, are much harder to measure. Typically, it takes many months to start seeing results.

As so for the last few years, some companies have refused to invest in ‘any marketing activity they can’t measure.’ As a result, investment in brand marketing has dwindled.

That old eBay experiment on branded search seems doubtful as studies like this show that most companies need both. You can flood the market with paid search ads or dump money into SEO to rank on page one, but if you want people to click, you need them to trust you. The way you build trust is by building a trusted brand.

To that end, my personal anecdote adds to the evidence. If a bad actor can build a performance marketing campaign on top of a trusted brand and dupe a skeptical buyer – then the same tactic will work for an honest brand hoping to sell a genuine solution that solves a real business problem.

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Image credit: Google Gemini and Page One Power