On some searches, your site ranks 1st in Google's organic results and your ad shows right above it. You pay for the ad click, and some of those people would have clicked your free listing anyway. Google's own pause tests, published in 2012, put that share at about half, on average, when your organic result ranks 1st.
This post finds those searches in 4 steps: the Google Ads report that lists them, what Google's research says they're worth, how to get a ranked test list from Claude, and how to test before you pause anything. The facts come from Google's Help pages, Google's 2012 research and Seer Interactive's guide to the report. Where the reasoning is ours, it says "Our read".
Step 1: Open the report that shows both
Google Ads has a Paid & organic report, and it only works with Search Console connected. Google's Help page: “To view the paid and organic report, you must have your Search Console account linked to your Google Ads account.” Once the 2 are linked, Google says “you’ll be able to view your organic search results right alongside the performance statistics for text ads in your Google Ads Search campaigns.”
Seer Interactive's guide lists what you get for each search: the query, the search result type, your ad's clicks, impressions, CTR, average CPC and cost, your organic clicks and organic average position, and combined clicks. The search result type says whether the query was “shown as an organic listing only, as an ad only or shown for both”.
The rows you want are the ones shown for both. 1 limit, from Google: “the paid and organic report counts performance of text ads only. It doesn't count statistics from Shopping ads or click-to-download ads.”
Step 2: Know what the overlap is worth
In 2012, Google's researchers pooled 390 Search Ads Pause studies, where advertisers paused their search ads and Google measured how many of the lost ad clicks came back as organic clicks. A click that didn't come back is incremental: the ad caused it. On average:
| Your organic result ranked | Ad clicks you'd lose by pausing the ad |
|---|---|
| 1st | 50% |
| 2nd to 4th | 82% |
| 5th or lower | 96% |
So at organic #1, about half the ad clicks came back through the free listing when the ad was off. From 5th down, almost none did.
The same study found that 81% of ad impressions and 66% of ad clicks happened when the advertiser had no organic result on page 1 at all. Our read: that's why the overlap list is short. Most of your ad clicks have no free listing to fall back on.
3 caveats, all from Google's paper. These are averages, and “results for individual advertisers may vary”. The paper also notes that “the study focuses on clicks rather than conversions”, so it says nothing about sales. And the data is from 2012: we found no newer figure from Google.
Step 3: Export it and ask Claude for the test list
The report has a cost column and an organic average position column for every query, which is all you need to rank the overlap. Export it as a CSV, upload the file to Claude, and ask:
"This is my Google Ads Paid & organic report. List the searches where both my ad and my organic listing showed and my organic average position is 3 or better. Sort them by ad cost, highest first, and show ad clicks, organic clicks and cost for each."
The top of that list is where the most money goes to clicks you might have gotten for free. That's your test list, not your pause list.
Our read: a spreadsheet sort does the same job. Claude saves you the filters, and you can follow up in plain words ("which of these are brand searches?") without building a pivot table.
Step 4: Test in some regions before you pause anywhere
Google's paper recommends randomized experiments, for example by region, to measure what an ad adds. Pause the ads on your test list in a few regions only, keep them running elsewhere, and compare total clicks (paid plus organic) and sales between the 2 groups over the same weeks.
Start with your #1 queries, where Google's average says about half the ad clicks come back anyway. Measure sales, not only clicks, because the 2012 study counted clicks.
The 1 exception: a rival bidding on your brand name
Our read: if a competitor bids on your brand name, keep your ad. Ads show above organic results, so when you pause yours, their ad can take the top spot above your own #1 listing. Google's averages don't tell you what happens when a rival's ad is waiting for that space.
What this can't tell you
- Your number. The 50% is an average across 390 studies from 2012. Yours comes from your own regional test.
- Sales. The study counted clicks. A click that returns through organic may convert differently.
- Shopping ads. Google says the report counts text ads only.
Link Search Console to Google Ads if you haven't, export the Paid & organic report, and ask Claude for the searches where you rank in the top 3 and pay the most. Pick 3 of them for a regional test.
Sources
- Google Ads Help, “Product Linking: Link Search Console and Google Ads”, read Oct 16, 2026
- Google Ads Help, “About measuring paid and organic search results”, read Oct 16, 2026
- Seer Interactive, “How To Use the Google Ads Paid & Organic Search Report”, Chellsea Petri, Dec 8, 2023
- Google Research blog, “Impact of Organic Ranking on Ad Click Incrementality”, David Chan and Lizzy Van Alstine, Mar 27, 2012
Quotations are exact. Lines marked Our read are MichaelBennett.co's reasoning, not Google's or Seer's.
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