Does Adwords participation affect organic rank?

Google says no, vendor says yes

[cgrantski]

I was in a conversation yesterday with a SEM pro who said, quite strongly, that participation in AdWords will help improve a site's natural or unpaid rank on Google.

I've heard "no" to this so many times, and this morning Google AdWords reps also said "no" (quite definitively) ... but this guy says Google people are telling him "yes."

Here are some specific questions. Please help because it's a credibility issue between us.

1. Do AdWords ads on various search engines count as "links" when Google calculates PR or SERP rank?
2. Do AdWords ads on affiliate (content) sites count as "links" when Google calculates PR or SERP rank?
3. Does the CTR for Google ads, if astronomically high, help a site's PR or SERP rank?

Thanks for any input!

[Sanenet]

No, No and No.

The only effect having adwords on a page has is that Google.Mediabot (used to, don't know if it still does) told Googlebot that the page existed. Apart from that, different datacentres, robots, and support teams.

[cgrantski]

True. But maybe Google's natural spider finds AdWords ads on another site, doesn't recognize them as Google-channel ads (or doesn't care), and counts them as links to the site, thereby increasing PR and eventually SERP rank? I think that's the underlying premise of this guy's claim.

[bhartzer]

No, No, and No.

I couldn't have said it better.

Google will never see AdSense ads as links. They're javascript links, anyway, so right now it's not possible.

The AdWords database is completely different than the database used for organic listings, anyway.

[buckworks]

There's a very small, very indirect way that Adwords can help, but note that ANY advertising can have this effect:

Pumping more traffic through your site can increase your chances of picking up one-way organic links now and then, which we all know is A Good Thing.

As for there being any direct relationship between Adwords and rankings in Google's regular SERPs, there isn't one. The SEM guy you talked to was flat wrong.

[Syzygy]

No, No, and No.

I couldn't have said it better.

Ditto...

Syzygy

[sacX]

I've seen this before, other sites (illegally) using google's results in them, and as a consquence I've ended up with many inward links.

[cgrantski]

Interesting. I'll go hunting for some of these in our industry. How big a problem is this illegal use of Google results? I assume if Google notices it, Google might not only penalize that site but also the PR of the link recipients?