has anyone an experience how great the diffenence (number of visitors for the same keyword) is between se-position #1 and #2 or even #3 for the same keywod and site? i just ask because i often find myself just skipping the first result without even reading it, just because there is a sponsored result at this possition for most keywords, or another big site like ebay or just spam. if i look at this adsense heatmap, it seems like #2 and #3 are even much closer to the hot area, which means they are easier to spot. what do you think about it? and how would you rank for #2 without overtaking #1
Here's a good article: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/06/21/how-much-traffic-does-being-ranked-1-on-google-bring/ Apparently for in one case it was a "60% change in visits". That's a lot less. So #1 is #1. Skinny
Googles ranking algorithms are very complicated but its pretty safe to say, for medium-high keyword phrases, the first position will always draw in more traffic. That heatmap is totally irrelevant, Google has a different search page layout but common sense should tell you that the first result is (usually) more relevant, so it will receive more clicks.
I'm sure it depends on the keywords too. If #1 isn't really related to what you are then I wouldn't worry as much. But if it's your main competition then overtake the guy, and see for yourself how much better it is I do skip over #1 sometimes and go to the result that looks the most appealing for what I'm looking for.
It really depends on who is number one for your keyword(s). Sometimes it is a spammy site which users will remember, or just skip when looking at results. Although, if number 1 is a good quality site then I can see it getting more hits than number 2 from google.
erm... are there proper studies to prove the accuracy of the heat map? might just be one's thoughts instead of a proper study backed by research...
why bother discussing which is better #1 or #2 when you can have both the positions! Afterall every site can have two pages for each keyword
The heatmap is provided by Google to help webmasters know the best positioning for there ads (the locations that receive most clicks), thus it is quite irrelevant to this - you cant really compare it to a search listings page.
I wish I had the link, but I saw one study last year that the drop off from #1 to #2 was around 40%. So while it is less than the 60% quoted in the problogger study, it's consistent in the implications.
I was #3 for a specified keyword last month, since august 1st i`m #1 and my traffic for that keyword went down ( MSN )
For competive keywords i have a site which is No.1 for few keywords but I don't see any traffic months after month in MSN.
#10 sometimes is as good as #1, if you look at a users activity, you will notice that sometimes they ended up visiting site #10. I dont know if anyone has made any research on this, but that is my theory about it. Cheers.