Google Ads vs. Google Search Console

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Ads
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is Google's pay-per-click online advertising program. With Google Ads users set their budget and choose where their ads appear in search listings, and on partner websites. Google Ads uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.N/A
Google Search Console
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Google Search Console is a search engine optimization software solution offered by Google.N/A
Pricing
Google AdsGoogle Search Console
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google AdsGoogle Search Console
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google AdsGoogle Search Console
Considered Both Products
Google Ads
Chose Google Ads
We have observed that the Bing Ads performs better than the Google Ads when we target the older audience. The cost per conversion is also better than the Google Ads on Bing because of low competition possibly. However, Google Ads is preferred by us mostly because of the …
Chose Google Ads
Neither platform seems to perform in my opinion. Google Ads is much more complicated while Facebook Ads are simpler to implement and run. No positive ROI on either though!
Google Search Console
Chose Google Search Console
Google Search Console is free to use. HubSpot can be quite costly and out of my client's budgets.
Chose Google Search Console
Google Search Console is obviously not as robust as a paid service like SEMRush, but it provides quick, easy, at-a-glance insights to make our jobs easier.
Chose Google Search Console
The paid software mentioned all provide great insights and areas of opportunity. Those insights coupled with Google's free Search Console allow one to make changes directly into the SERPs. The ability to push a page to be crawled ensures that your changes will be seen by google …
Chose Google Search Console
Google search console has different features than the other tools and provides help in ways other tools don't such as sitemap optimization and overall impressions of your brand online.
Chose Google Search Console
Usually, I use multiple tools and GSC is the first on my list along with Google Analytics since both of these tools are free and are sufficient for monitoring, analyzing and managing digital marketing for a small business. However, there are some limitations to these tools like …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Google AdsGoogle Search Console
SEO
Comparison of SEO features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
-
Ratings
Google Search Console
8.1
49 Ratings
4% above category average
Keyword analysis00 Ratings8.542 Ratings
Backlink management00 Ratings8.837 Ratings
SERP ranking tracking00 Ratings9.339 Ratings
Page grader00 Ratings8.429 Ratings
Competitive analysis00 Ratings7.616 Ratings
Site audit / diagnostics00 Ratings6.341 Ratings
Site recommendations00 Ratings7.839 Ratings
Task management00 Ratings8.518 Ratings
SEO Channels
Comparison of SEO Channels features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
-
Ratings
Google Search Console
8.1
46 Ratings
6% above category average
Local SEO00 Ratings9.134 Ratings
Social SEO00 Ratings8.019 Ratings
Mobile SEO00 Ratings8.343 Ratings
Global SEO00 Ratings7.038 Ratings
SEO Platform & Account Management
Comparison of SEO Platform & Account Management features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
-
Ratings
Google Search Console
8.6
46 Ratings
2% above category average
Multi-domain support00 Ratings8.942 Ratings
Integration with web analytics tools00 Ratings8.243 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google AdsGoogle Search Console
Small Businesses
Serpstat
Serpstat
Score 9.3 out of 10
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WordStream Advisor
WordStream Advisor
Score 7.0 out of 10
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google AdsGoogle Search Console
Likelihood to Recommend
7.1
(115 ratings)
9.0
(49 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(21 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.2
(7 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.9
(8 ratings)
6.1
(8 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google AdsGoogle Search Console
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Clients who are selling products such as dresses, clothes, jewelry, beauty products, etc., generally work well. Also, in some cases, it doesn't fetch a good ROAS for very small business owners. If a client is already doing well in SEO, the probability for it to perform well over Google Ads is always enhanced, and if it doesn't have a good organic reach, Google Ads also suffers.
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Google
Google Search Console is helpful to understand what terms customers search for and click onto your website from. However, it's not helpful if you're looking for deep competitive insight on search terms people are using and how that impacts your website.
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Pros
Google
  • Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO
  • Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week
  • Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products).
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Google
  • You can also submit your sitemap directly to Google and get it crawled.
  • You can also index and crawl you updated and new webpages.
  • It also displays errors that are preventing your site pages to get indexed in Google.
  • You get a list of all the keywords for which your site is ranking.
  • You can track its position, CTR and impressions.
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Cons
Google
  • If you don't know what you're doing, it will be a costly mistake. You need to target ads, and it is difficult the first time to do that.
  • There isn't a feature to run an add for a couple set date spans, just hours you want to run them or a single date span.
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Google
  • It can be a little difficult to navigate
  • More training resources would be an asset. A beginner is given the power to completely destroy a sites search results at the push of a button. Likewise it is a powerful tool to enhance search results also.
  • An option to take care of multiple versions of the same site simultaneously would be helpful. An option to use the same validation script across all versions and administer them simultaneously would be a time save (i.e. non-www, www, http://, and https:// versions of the same site).
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
I think Google Ads is good for getting your company out there and becoming more visible to potential customers in general. However, for specific product launches, social media advertising might be a better fit. Also, our user base is younger so social media is a better channel for our target audience.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Usability
Google
I suspect that Google Ads is not for the novice user. I told my 'Ad Specialist' that I was not the best on computers and apprehensive about my ability to maneuver the website. He told me on more than one occasion that "I work for you...I'm your sherpa...call me any time or send me an email"!
The sales and service representatives for Google Ads are very well trained, though not much integrity. Despite that I told my Google Ad Specialist that my website was incomplete the ad was published live anyway! Beware that the 'talk' is good, but it ain't cheap!
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Google
Google Search Console is a simple program that allows organizations to get a solid understanding of the way their site functions and how users land on it. It can be used for making critical business decisions regarding marketing budgets and that within itself is why it deserves a 10.
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Support Rating
Google
We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with
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Google
As with all Google software, your primary source of help is their forums, their knowledge base articles, or whatever tutorials you can find on the web. Often answers on their forums are not straightforward and may not address the actual issue you're experiencing. The KB articles are typically written like instruction manuals - for better or for worse. Tutorials on the web may vary, but the odds are good someone out there had the same questions as you and was kind enough to document their experience.
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Online Training
Google
Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Google
Our agency invests heavily in Google Ads (particularly paid search advertising) on behalf of our clients relative to competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo because Google is the top search engine in the world. Google collects the most search data which enables the company to improve its AI to drive better performance for agencies and brands. As such, our paid search and app install campaigns always start with Google. If a client has a large budget, we will allocate media dollars to other search engines, but in some cases, the entire search budget goes to Google because we see the best returns.
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Google
SEMRush is a supplementary tool we use to provide competitive analysis. While it does, or should, provide the same data that Search Console does, but I only fully trust Search Console when it comes to basic performance in Google for the sites we develop and own. SEMRush, and other products like it, does provide much more in-depth insights that can help drive business decisions, including site performance on other search engines, along putting organic and paid search performance in one spot. However, SEMRush costs money while Search Console is free.
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Return on Investment
Google
  • Google Ads is often one of our highest ROI channels, especially when you factor in branded ads.
  • Depending on the stage your business is in, search ads can be really powerful from an ROI perspective, providing an investment with a very high spend cap.
  • If you do not manage the campaigns well though, you can quickly spend a lot of money on nothing. So make sure someone is keeping an eye on your account.
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Google
  • Given that this is a free tool, the return on investment has been particularly high - we've identified and addressed a few site issues that could have meant a reduction in search traffic.
  • Our organic search traffic has been on the rise in part due to the insights gained from the search traffic analytics provided within the console.
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ScreenShots