Anyone know of any research/reports that have studied the likelihood that a user will click on the #1 SERP vs. #2, vs. #5, #10 etc.??? I've found alot of research about this for PPC ads, showing that the #1 ad gets close to 70% in many cases, and then #2 maybe 50% and so on.... But I've not found a thing for organic rankings. Surely someone has done a study on this? Naturally for specific application it would depend on other factors such as the search term, wording of the titles and descriptions, etc. I was hoping that any kind of a study though with a decent sample size might nullify this and give me a decent general idea. My hope is to use this to make traffic predictions for various targeted terms. I.E. if we can get #1 for a term that is searched 100 times per day how many visitors can we expect from that? What is we're #5 or #10, and so on.
I think that is too hard to do because of ever changing variables and lack of updated data available to us end users. And because of the ever changing variables you might be able to get a ballpark figure, but then that will change month to month, or even day to day because of the popularity changes of searches and advertisers, and google Algo always chages, etc. etc. It would be nice to see though. But then again it might just confuse you. You might be best off by targeting a certain niche or genre group of keywords and see if that can be tested. ie. your own theme, this way you are only taking a sample of the population and it's targeted towards your theme. That's all I got.
Thanks SGH. I know its a bit unrealistic to try and get numbers that I can have complete faith in... but surely ballpark numbers have got to be out there somewhere. I would think that info would be quite valuable - perhaps warranting a study of some sorts. In order to be worth anything though you'd probably need to have a the very least a few dozen users doing a few dozen searches. Too much to do just for my own use... What about everyone's actual experience? Let's say you have a #1 for XYZ term which supposively gets 100 searches per day. Are you getting 50 visitors per day on avg. from that term? 10? 90?
In my experience #1 position gives 20%-30% more visits than #2-4 Seems like it's almost no difference within ##2-5. Might be funny but I think good position is when your site is within screen view on SERP. Usually it's first 4-5 results. Most people tend click on those. ## 8-10 are about twice less than 4-5 ## 11 - 20 are better than nothing but no match to first 10... Again, just my experience...
IMHO #11 is better than #10 between #2-#5 there's little difference from #6-#10 is much worse than what the numbers say
I think it largely depends on the searcher. If they are looking to buy something, they will be much more likely to go beyond the first page of the SERPs to compare products/services.
I always feel down when I lose a #1 ranking. But then I'm always shocked to find that it doesn't make too much difference. In my experience I would actually say #1 is about 10% - 20% more traffic than #2.
I think it has a lot to do with the summary text displayed. If it looks spammy, forget it, people will look past it to the next one. Strangely, I rarely click on #1 in a broad search. Usually what I'm looking for is in the top 7, and I rarely go to page 3, occasionally to page 2. There are a ton of sites that I just skip past because I know they are full of ads and it isn't necessarily the advertising that bothers me, but all the foreign domain cookies. I bet people who are more concerned about adware and spyware are more picky and tend to dig further down.
I read somewhere, can't quite remember, someone quoting that the likelihood of someone clicking the #1 is very high compared to even the #2. Something like #1 is more than 50 times likely than #2. I found it when I was trying to rank number 1 for a particular keyword. Take this number. The keyword is searched about 300 times a day according to wordtracker. I was on number 3. I used to get about 15-20 referrals a day. I jumped to number 1 from number 3. Now I average 350+. Will try to find that out and get back... And yes, the difference is HUGE..
Here is some articles I found on AOL's SERP: AOL Data reveals how top 10 positions affect CTR AOL Data Analysis - I. Clicks on Search Engine Results Seems like the #1 spot is pretty important
I had a #1 position on Yahoo for a good keyword, and I was getting well over uniques a day, and then I slipped to #3 and I was only getting about 10 hits per day I am not even ranked for that keyword anymore, so now I am getting a whopping 0 hits/day from that page
Interesting info. I think to add to that, it largely depends on the quality of the results above yours would also factor into the equation as well. Most people would skim over the first few results I would imagine to see what appeals to them.
I wouldn't worry too much about 1,2,3,4 positions. It has alot more to do with how targeted and relevant a description is than its position. The searcher will skip your site if it has a junk description no matter where it is. But try to get within the first 4. A #1 is always nice as well
I think no1 spot makes a great deal of difference. one of my pages used to rank no1 on google for 3 months and now slipped to no5 and traffic is down by 95%
I have had all of those rankings and really have seen little difference. You just have to have a superior description and title. That will beat them.
Of course, having a great title and description is good. Obviously, lets take into account that you already have a good title/description. The original poster said nothing about having a "bad description", that wasn't his question. My last posted gave a link to STRICT data from an actual search engine that shows click-thru rates. Pretty conclusive.
I think that depends on what the goal of your site is, and what its theme is, as well. Not all searches or searchers are created equally. There are some subjects that draw mindless clicks. There are other subjects that demand the dilligence of the searcher. For example - engineering design vs. funny videos.