Does it hurt your rankings?

[shovelguy]

Hi,

On September 30th, I had a page rank 23. On October 1st, I used adwords to promote the page. On October 2nd, the page was ranked 9. Now today, the page ranks 40. :(

If your adword campaign doesn't work well, will that count against your ranking in the search results?

[HughMungus]

Are you sure it's not coincidental?

[Robsp]

It is not supposed to have any impact.

[engine]

Take a look at other pages to see if they've altered position. One page in many is not be a good sample to measure.

[JayC]

I've never seen or heard any credible evidence of that -- and it wouldn't make much sense on Google's part, since such a policy would discourage people from paying for AdWords.

[twebdonny]

I sure wish we had some more definitive info on this one
because I too have noticed a significant decrease in overall
traffic after starting an adwords campaign in the past.
Coincidence...probabaly, but then...think about the possiblities and how this could conceivably be used as an advantage to increase amount spent on adwords to keep traffic levels up. Just pondering....

[sem4u]

AdWords and traditional rankings are completely separate in my opinion.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

twebdonny, I am here to confirm that the unpaid search results and the paid AdWords advertising are 100% unrelated - and that one does not effect the other in any way.

[shovelguy]

It is really stange though, because none of my other pages drop in the unpaid rankings, and I did not use adwords on those pages. This is the first time our company has used ad words. I am really hesitant to pursue the use of adwords any further. Well, if anybody has a similar experience in the future please let me know.