When searching a keyword, I rarely click at sponsor links. How about you? I just wonder if we should pay for Google to get our sites listed high?
No You cannot pay or another word "bribe" google for high ranking in organic results. However, you can get it via Google Adwords instead with their PPC solution. lol
I think it depends on really how big of a budget you have. Sponsored sites can get a ton of traffic through their advertisements on Google. I would suggest sticking to increasing your Search Engine Ranking though so your are in the organic results. This will provide long term, steady, and free traffic to your website.
I guess you are talking about the adwords service. If you want to get listed in the advertising bar in the search result page, then you need to pay for it. On the other hand, you can’t pay to Google to get a higher SERP. They are completely 2 different things.
About 1-2% of people click on the right hand side sponsored links, 4-6% click on sponsored links on the top side and 10-30% click on the organic results! So aim for organic results if you can!
Basically most of us here have said it a straight NO for your question. However I would be happy if you would elaborate your question a bit and let me know what do you mean by paying to google ? Is it just the adwords ? or any other methods ?
If you are really serious about your search engine rankings - you do both. You get the top spot organically and in PPC. And then you do some real work. You get a facebook business page, a twitter account, a squidoo page a wikipedia page, and get them all on the first page of serps for your keyword.... just being on the first page of serps is not enough . Dominating that page is the aim. I don't want anyone to even SEE the opposition.
What do you think Google are? They are not "crappy", it is not the business of Google to get paid by people who want high rankking! It's Google man, the "King of Internet" not a crappy search engine who are laid by money. Edit: by reading others answers, i notice that you discuss about the ads? XD Sorry for being so hard. Hm, for Google Adwords, i think it not worth it to pay for being in the first page of Google becayse there are not many people who click on them. For me, these ads are like invinsible, i don't care.
It depends on how your monetizing your site. If you have a high converting page then it will work. If not then don't waste your time..
For getting good rank it is not necessary to pay Google but if you will pay then you can get good business.
You cannot pay Google to increase organic rankings in SERPs; however, you can pay for paid search advertising via Google AdWords.