Leaked AOL data: the importance of top search engine rankings

From Axandra news letter: 22 August 2006 (edited)

Earlier this month, AOL released sensitive search data detailing 20 million searches preformed by 658,000 subscribers. While the AOL data obviously raises privacy concerns, it can contain useful information for search engine marketers.

Which result page gets the most clicks?
91.63% of the AOL users clicked on the results on the first result page. Only 4.49% clicked a result from the second result page, 2.19% clicked a result on the third result page and even less people looked beyond the first three result pages.

Which search result position gets the most clicks?
Being #1 on the search results is best by far. 47.16% of the users clicked on the first result. That means that the first position in the search results gets almost half of the traffic.

It this also true for Google and Yahoo?
The numbers are for AOL users. Google and Yahoo users might be from a different demographic group than AOL users and they might have different search behavior. AOL users are often less tech-savvy, when compared to Google users.
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And, in other news: 3 AOL workers depart over privacy breach:

"AOL's chief technology officer left the company and two other workers were fired in the aftermath of a privacy breach that involved the intentional release of more than 650,000 subscribers' Internet search terms."
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Leaked AOL data: the importance of top search engine rankings

Cryogenius Peon

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Leaked AOL data: the importance of top search engine rankings

Cryogenius Peon

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