Why you need to be in the Top 10 search results
David Rosam on Aug 08 2007 at 6:52 pm | Filed under: Search Engine Optimization
An interesting piece of research is featured over at Search Engine Land.
Elliance’s infographic on Search Engine Click-Thru Behavior (sic) indicates that 62% of search users clicked on a result on the first page of search results (positions 1-10), and just 28% of search users clicked on a result on pages 2 and 3 (positions 11-30).
To me, 62% sounds too low, and there’s little background information from Elliance. They just say:
Click Thru Statistics
Most people still prefer listings found on the first page of results, but as users become more savvy, they realize that sometimes better results can be found by looking further into the search result pages.
But what about sample size, marketplaces, geographical spread, time of year and so on?
There’s potentially a more interesting piece of research highlighted in the post at Search Engine Land. Duz’s post from August 2006 about SERPs Positions and Clickthroughs at Search Engine Optimization for Site Owners and Small Businesses suggests:
An analysis of the AOL data accidentally released last year based on approximately 20 million web queries collected from approximately 650 thousand users shows a click through rate for the first page of results of 89.68% and 4.40% for the second. (Summary from his comment at Search Engine Land)
Whichever data you choose, the story is that positions on second, third and lower pages won’t get you much traffic and little profit. You need to invest in effective SEO that will get your site on the first page for relevant, higher traffic key phrases.
I’m not sure that’s the whole story there. Think of when you search personally. Sure I click a crap load of links on the first page, but a lot of times I have to go to the second or third or fourth pages of results to find what I’m looking for. So while they say 28% click…what percentage of those that clicked on the first page clicked on subsequent pages that followed?
Thomas
Yeah, the research isn’t that wonderful. But clients often ask me what percentage of clicks come from the first page of results.
And as most of the content on this blog is driven by questions and conversations about SEO, I felt the research was definitely worth posting.