How can you tell organic from paid on a Google results page?
By the label. Google marks its ads "Sponsored", and they sit above and below the unpaid results, with Shopping ads often at the very top for products. The map listings in the local pack are mostly organic, though ads can appear there too. Everything else on the page is organic: Google chose it, and nobody paid for the position. Google Search Central is plain that Google does not accept payment to rank a page higher in its results.
Where does Google Analytics split the two?
In its default channel groups. Google Analytics 4 sorts every visit into channels such as Organic Search, Paid Search, Organic Social, Paid Social, Email, Referral and Direct, so the split is waiting for you in the traffic acquisition report. For it to be right, your ads need tagging. Google Ads does it automatically when the two accounts are linked, and Meta ads need UTM parameters, or their visitors get counted as something else.
Is organic traffic free?
No. It costs the hours to write pages, collect reviews and post, sometimes money for a web developer or an SEO, and months of building. What it does not do is charge by the click, so once it is built, each extra visitor costs almost nothing. Paid is the reverse: quick to start, easy to measure, and the thousandth visitor costs as much as the first.
How do a tiler's two sources compare? (example figures)
A tiler in Wollongong has built up a Google Business Profile with 85 reviews and six service pages on the website, and also runs Google Ads. In a typical month:
| Organic | Paid | |
|---|---|---|
| Visits | 400 | 300 |
| Enquiries | 20 | 24 |
| Monthly cost | 4 hours of the owner's time at $70, plus $100 of website upkeep: $380 | 300 clicks at $5: $1,500 |
| Cost per enquiry | $19 | $62.50 |
Organic is cheaper per enquiry by a wide margin. Paid brings more enquiries a month and can be turned up next week if the diary empties. The tiler keeps both: paid for volume on demand, and organic as the cheap base that took two years to build.
Why do organic Facebook posts reach so few people?
Because Meta ranks what each person sees, and your post competes with everything their friends, groups and other followed pages publish that day. Meta's Transparency Centre explains that Feed ranking predicts how likely each person is to engage with each post and orders the Feed accordingly. A page with 2,000 followers should expect a post to reach a fraction of them, and a boosted post is Meta's offer to show it to more people for a price.
How does CoraVision put organic and paid side by side?
CoraVision reads both halves every night once your accounts are connected. From Google Analytics 4 it reads visits by channel, where organic and paid search and social sit on separate lines. The paid half it reads in more detail: spend, clicks, conversions and their value from Google Ads, and spend, results and their value from Meta. Your Trust Score says how far those numbers can be trusted, which counts here, because untagged ads show up as organic.
Questions
Do Google Ads help my organic ranking?
No. Google does not accept payment to rank pages higher in its unpaid results, and running ads neither helps nor hurts your organic position (Google Search Central). Ads can still help indirectly, by introducing people who later search for your business by name.
Should I stop paying for ads once organic works?
Not by default. Compare the cost per enquiry or sale on each side, and ask whether organic alone brings the volume your goal needs. Ads stay useful for searches you cannot rank for and for filling a quiet fortnight.