Organic vs. Referral

[rigi]

Since some time i`m trying to figure out if there is any difference, in googles eyes, between organic and referring traffic. My site has about 60% referring and I wonder if this has some kind of effect on the revenue or even if it`s against some line in TOS?

Thank you.

[martinibuster]

What do you mean by referring traffic?

[StatiX]

In my experience, organic traffic is more likely to click than referrer traffic. I don't see why it would have anything to do with the source of the traffic unless it was some sort of pay to surf traffic

[FortySomething]

I'd translate that to mean that 60% of the traffic is purchased via adwords etc, and 40% is natural traffic from serps / links.

Google don't seem to differentiate between organic and adwords traffic, provided the trafic has been achieved within the TOS. IE no click rings and suchlike. I am aware there is an argument that adwords traffic may convert better than organic (or vice-versa) but other than that, provided your traffic is what Google would view as legitimate the mix is irrelevant.

[rigi]

Well to be more specific, none of my traffic comes from adwords or any other form of payed advertisements but those 60% come from other sites that link to mine but I do not link back. This traffic is marked as `referring` in google analytics and the `organic` part would come from search engines as also stated in analytics.

P.S. I don`t use no pay for click or click rings or such.

[FortySomething]

I don't see a problem with that. A proportion of my traffic comes from links to my content and I haven't linked back.

[Pengi]

I believe that surfers generally fall into three categories: Those that never click on any Ad or sponsored link, those that occasionally click on pertinent ads/sponsored links, and those that are not aware that some links are PPC.

If traffic has arrived via Adwords - you have already eliminated anyone in the first category - whoever has arrived at your site is looking for something and is preparedto clink on an ad or sponsored link to find it. IMHO this explains why a site obtaining traffic via adwords can reasonable expect to see a CTR an order of magnitude better than a site obtaining traffic naturally.