Google Ads vs. Google Search Console

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Ads
Score 8.3 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.
$500
in Ads credit in the first 60 days
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
Offer A
$500
in Ads credit in the first 60 days
Offer B
$1500
in Ads credit in the first 60 days
Offer C
$3000
in Ads credit in the first 60 days
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
Google Ads is one of the more advanced tools, all the above tools listed are great and provide very advanced features for advertising on those platforms. Usually a business would use multiple tools. Google Ads is great as it is very fined and established so you know what you …
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 …
Features
Google AdsGoogle Search Console
Ad Campaigns
Comparison of Ad Campaigns features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
6.8
11 Ratings
8% above category average
Google Search Console
-
Ratings
Ad campaign creation7.611 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad deployment7.310 Ratings00 Ratings
Display advertising7.410 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad display and retargeting segmentation7.411 Ratings00 Ratings
Sequence targeting6.310 Ratings00 Ratings
Contextual advertising6.710 Ratings00 Ratings
Social advertising4.95 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Ad Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
7.2
11 Ratings
6% above category average
Google Search Console
-
Ratings
Ad dashboards7.111 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad performance reports8.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad conversion tracking7.411 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad attribution reporting7.311 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad forecasting and optimization6.511 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad Auctions
Comparison of Ad Auctions features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
7.9
10 Ratings
5% below category average
Google Search Console
-
Ratings
Ad bidding7.910 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO
Comparison of SEO features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
-
Ratings
Google Search Console
6.1
54 Ratings
23% below category average
Keyword analysis00 Ratings8.346 Ratings
Backlink management00 Ratings4.642 Ratings
SERP ranking tracking00 Ratings7.044 Ratings
Page grader00 Ratings5.032 Ratings
Competitive analysis00 Ratings2.017 Ratings
Site audit / diagnostics00 Ratings7.646 Ratings
Site recommendations00 Ratings6.243 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
7.0
51 Ratings
8% below category average
Local SEO00 Ratings4.536 Ratings
Social SEO00 Ratings8.019 Ratings
Mobile SEO00 Ratings7.648 Ratings
Global SEO00 Ratings8.042 Ratings
SEO Platform & Account Management
Comparison of SEO Platform & Account Management features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
-
Ratings
Google Search Console
8.1
51 Ratings
4% below category average
Multi-domain support00 Ratings8.045 Ratings
Integration with web analytics tools00 Ratings8.248 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google AdsGoogle Search Console
Small Businesses
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
Nozzle
Nozzle
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.9 out of 10
Conductor
Conductor
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google AdsGoogle Search Console
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(126 ratings)
9.2
(54 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.6
(21 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(17 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(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
Google Ads is a useful advertising tool to build brand exposure and generate lead volumes for your chosen product. Whilst it can be costly at times due to competitor bidding strategies and requires constant monitoring to ensure campaigns perform as expected, it typically provides the desired quality and quantity of leads for custom budgets.
Read full review
Google
There are lots of tools and platforms that help us rank well on search engines. While that is helpful, we do need to know how those efforts paid off. This is where Google Search Console comes in. It is vital for every business or website trying to rank well on search engines to have Google Search Console so that they can track their performance and make necessary adjustments.
Read full review
Pros
Google
  • Automated targeting via Smart Shopping campaign. It's one of the best campaign types in Google Ads. In the beginning, you may see lower revenue and ROAS, but once you give some meaningful time to your campaign, it is most likely to perform well.
  • Smart bidding strategies: Google Ads has developed some really great bidding strategies such as maximizing conversion and maximizing conversion with ROAS settings. Based on one's requirement and their goal with revenue and target ROAS, they can choose the appropriate bidding strategy.
  • Reporting: A business owner and advertising must know about their audiences, how their campaigns have been performing, what's working and what's not, and for that reason, powerful, effective reporting is needed, and Google Ads provides rich details reporting that covers almost every aspect of a business.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Google
No answers on this topic
Usability
Google
This is more of a subjective rating, because I think it can be increased with how much our ad spend is. The more of an ad spend, the more visibility we can get, and therefore all features can climb. With an overall larger presence the usability is that where we can get messages out quick, and that's the main thing we try to do with our campaigns.
Read full review
Google
It's easy to use, but some features are lacking a clear explanation. Somethings don't always match up. For example, the Core Web Vitals often doesn't match what you would see in the Chrome Lighthouse report or the Google Page Speed Insights tool. The tool itself is a little too basic and has to be used alongside other SEO tools and other Google properties such as Analytics
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
ScreenShots