What are Paid Listings?
Paid listings are the slots in the search results that advertisers buy through paid inclusion and placement to appear on the designated SERP sections. Marketers can now reserve visibility for particular keywords and save on organic ranking, as these positions are almost always marked as ads. Paid listings use auction-based CPC or flat fee models, which help capture traffic instantly for competitive search queries. Alongside SEO, these paid tools help capture clicks and conversions while building the brand’s unpaid presence over the long term.
Examples of paid listings would include sidebar advertisements bidding for “running shoes,” Google ads purchasing “hotel reservations” as a top-of-page keyword, and registering in paid directories to list professional services.
Related terms: sponsored result, ad slot, CPC auction, paid search.