Breakpoint, an earnersforum member, calculated the AOL data from August and showed the difference in clickthrough rates for the top 10 search results. How important is the #1 spot? Pretty darn important. Here are the figures:
Total Searches:9,038,794
Total Clicks: 4,926,623
Click Rank1: 2,075,765
Click Rank2: 586,100 = 3.5x less
Click Rank3: 418,643 = 4.9x less
Click Rank4: 298,532 = 6.9x less
Click Rank5: 242,169 = 8.5x less
Click Rank6: 199,541 = 10.4x less
Click Rank7: 168,080 = 12.3x less
Click Rank8: 148,489 = 14.0x less
Click Rank9: 140,356 = 14.8x less
Click Rank10: 147,551 = 14.1x less
Interestingly, position 10 does slightly better than position 9, which is what I would have assumed, since it will be the last place for the eye to land if not satisfied with the previous results.
About the Author: Donna Fontenot
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I got the same numbers from my sample; 42% from all the clicks are on the #1 spot. nearly 90% of the clicks are on the first 10 results..
for more numbers see here:
http://www.seo-portal.com/aol-data-analysis-i-clicks-on-search-engine-results/2006/08/09/
Good to know. I like the graphs on your site. Helps to visualize it nicely.
Really powerful evidence of the importance of a number 1 ranking versus overall 1st page rankings. In that example #1 had more clicks than the next 6 rankings. Hmmmm. gotta look hard at where I can get #1’s and where I need ppc, and where I need to get the long tail.
Dave
I can confirm these numbers, I had a site ranked on position 1 and then on position 7, the traffic was ten times less.
what I really, really wonder about is…
the clicks are only 54 % of the searches…what does that mean??
that many searches never complete their search?
if a keyword has 1000 searches a month, only 540 clicks go to the search results??
any info an that??
Thx
dan