What PPC stands for, and where you see it
Pay-per-click. The advertiser pays when the advert is clicked, not when it is shown. You see it as the results marked “Sponsored” at the top of Google, as shopping adverts with product images, as promoted posts in a social feed, and as the adverts on other websites that follow you after you have visited a shop. The same billing model runs across all of them.
It is one of the most-asked questions in online advertising, along with “how does Google PPC work”. Google Ads is the PPC most small businesses mean, and it is the one this guide uses for the numbers.
How the auction sets the price
- You choose phrases and set the most you will pay for a click on each.
- Someone types a phrase. Google runs an auction among every advertiser bidding on it, in the time it takes the page to load.
- Each advert is ranked on bid multiplied by a quality score: how relevant the advert is to the phrase, how likely it is to be clicked, and how good the landing page is.
- The winners appear in rank order. You pay roughly the minimum needed to beat the advertiser below you, not your maximum, and only if someone clicks.
Two consequences matter for a small business. A relevant advert with a good landing page can outrank a bigger budget, because quality multiplies the bid. And the price of a phrase is set by what other businesses will pay for that customer, which is why the click prices below tell you how valuable a searcher is before you have spent anything.
What clicks really cost
| Kind of phrase | Typical click price |
|---|---|
| An early cost question a buyer types (“what does X cost”) | Under £10 |
| A local service search (“your trade + your town”) | £15–£40 |
| Agency-service and lead-generation phrases | £70 and up |
Source: Google Ads click prices in Cybrial’s own market, read September 2026, given as ranges because the exact phrases and figures are our own research.
Read the table as a map of what other businesses think a searcher is worth. Nobody pays over seventy pounds a click for an agency-service phrase unless the person typing it goes on to spend thousands. Nobody pays even a few pounds for a definitional question unless those people are about to buy something. The prices are also the reason the website must convert before the clicks are bought: at fifteen pounds a click, a lead costs about £1,500 at 1 in 100 and about £375 at 4 in 100.
When PPC is the right tool
- You need enquiries this month. Nothing else on the list works in days.
- The phrase is valuable and competitive and you are nowhere organically. PPC buys the position while SEO earns it.
- You want to learn which phrases convert before writing pages for them. Two weeks of adverts is the best keyword research there is.
- Demand is seasonal or time-limited.
- The website converts. If it does not, PPC is the fastest way to find out, expensively.
It is the wrong tool for phrases nobody bids on (the question-shaped ones, which organic content owns), for tiny budgets that cannot buy enough clicks to learn from, and for any business that has not yet done the free things: profile, reviews, a converting site.
The fee model to refuse
PPC management is charged three ways: a flat fee for the hours, a percentage of what you spend (up to 40% in the UK market), or a mixture. The percentage rewards the agency for spending your money, whether or not it converts. A flat fee rewards them for making it work, because that is how you grow and need a bigger block. Ours is inside a growth block from £250 a month and does not move with the budget. Ask any manager how the fee is calculated before anything else.
