Observed relationships between traffic and search rankings

Hi,

I mentioned this in another post, I thought a new thread might be interesting, namely:

What kind of ratio do you observe between search results rankings in generating traffic?

For instance, I usually find that placed no. 10 gets more clicks than 5-9 probably because its closer to the next page buttons. I was wondering what kind of differences can be expected between a no. 1 placement vs no. 2, 3, etc.

I'll usually go through the first two or three links, then just scroll till I find something intersting. So your hypothesis seems correct that the tenth link would ge the third or forth most hits off of each search.

I certainly have noticed huge increases in traffic (like 2 or 3 times) for some keywords when I got bumped up from 8th to 1st. I've also seen boosts like 1.5 times when going from 3rd to first if their was a competing relevant sites ahead of me.

I have often wondered about what the averages are, like what percent click on the 1st and so on, and how many surfers actually go to the second page. I haven't seen any such stats, but I would think that they would be fairly similar amoungst all major search engines. Somebody must have released this info somewhere.

that's also pretty much what i do as well. depending on the results of
course. this is definitely interesting.

I'd think that #1 through #3 are the most visible, but if the page titles and/or domain do not entice the user, you could get no traffic from those rankings.
http://www.internet-marketing-research. ... ng-ctr.php

In that article, I addressed some factors which determine SERP CTR's, such as descriptive file naming, and creating page titles that appeal to humans.

Thanks for that JohnScott, very interesting. I was wondering, what population size did you test on and to what degree were the results statistically significant? Also, did you focus on any particular age groups?

It was a very large survey done here in Vegas on the strip. We tried to get an accurate cross-section of the general population. The full results will be published here:
http://www.internet-marketing-research.net/survey.php

It included several tests which produced more interesting facts - such as page factors recall which showed that most users were not even seeing banners even when they were prominently placed.


It's just a huge amount of data which needs to be put into a format which is searchable by demographic group (age, income, ethnic, etc).

I always click on the bottom link on the first page of google, I never click on 1 through 5 no matter how enticing the link is when the topic is really broad and has a lot of hits..

when the topic is very niche, then i go for the top links.

I think as long as you're on the 1st page, traffic is pretty decent. Of course, getting #1 is best, and although its hard to say for sure, my 'feeling' is that it'll get you a good 20-50% more hits than, say, position 5 or 6, but not double or triple. People really do read down the results when they are looking for something...so if yours looks best, chances are you'll get the click.

Getting on the first page is what counts, but getting no.1 will definately get you the most traffic.

I think alot of this is based on what type of sites you are dealing with. If your shopping by price you may be tempted to click more links to get a better sample of the price range. How about the PCP ads on Google....I never seem drawn to the top two that sit above the unpaid results, but rather I shoot for the top ad in the right hand column....

Personally, if I find the info I'm looking for in the first 2 or 3 links, I'm done. If I don't find the info, I shift+click every other link on the page n' click next, heh.

Then as the next google page is loading, I flick through the windows to see what's on those pages.

So, yeah, unless I don't find what I want in the first 2 or 3 links of a search, I don't generally look beyond them. And even if I don't find what I want in the first 2 or 3 links, I may not loko at those further down the page, I may simply enter a new search phrase to get more accurate results.

Shift+click ! very nice. Yet another reason to have quick loading pages.

And another reason to not use flash for links on a website ("Open in New Window" rules)

Yeah, I know, OT for the thread, but I had to do it

I wanted to add that when I look at the conversion rates on my site, I see that I get better results being listed 2-5th position than 1st.