Insights | Search Engines

Hi Daniel, nice to meet you. What a fantastic article. This also supports what we’ve seen on our company website. We never broke down the percentages but we’ve noticed similar patterns with our landing pages. Thanks for the post.

Jim Adams

This is great data. Thank you for sharing it. It would be even more interesting to see how that traffic converts. So, do conversions from the traffic segments follow the same or similar trends as the traffic itself? That is, are conversion rates from traffic from the #1 result (magnitudes) higher than conversion rates from traffic from the #2 result, etc?

Any information for when more “universal” type data is returned. For example a local 7 pack, news results at the top, videos or images on the page? Most of these numbers look pretty similar to the AOL data leak a few years ago.

Thanks!
Mike

Whatever some SEO say about positioning, it is definitely not dead !!

[...] number two listing, and triple the traffic as the page listed third. That’s according to some new research published by the online ad network [...]

Whilst this study does yield results that we’d expect, there seem to be a number of issues with the methodology (which should be published in greater details when making claims like this).

For example – is the study seasonally normalised? There’s a snapshot in time, but there’s no clue as to whether certain sites naturally perform better / worse in May. This could skew the results.

Are the results normalised for keyword search volume? Again, keyword search terms with higher / lower search rates could well skew results.

Is there an accounting for the presence of wikipedia / similar sites in the results? Intention of search is definitely something to consider when considering clickthrough rates.

Are the search terms quoted as ‘exact match’ or not?

I think, while interesting, the results as is don’t really give us much in the way of insight beyond ‘higher is better’.

#2 is the first loser. But in this case you get rewarded at least 17% of the time. I’d rather #1 anytime.

Its interesting to see that people do go to second page of Google to find what they are looking for. Quite surprise by the 2nd page results. I also thought there would be a huge difference between 1st and 2nd position.

Nice one Daniel.

I knew there was difference between 1 and 2 and of course between 10 and 11 considering it page 1 versus page 2 but honestly i did not know it was that much.

great post and info. thanks for sharing the info.

That’s not the pattern I expected – I thought there’d be a far more substantial drop off between first and second.

Great article though, very helpful.

Interesting – Great motivator for seeking out niche search terms with longer tails

Interesting to see these numbers in comparison to the 2006 AOL dataset which showed the following (42% for 1st position, 12% for 2nd, 8.5% for third, etc).

One of the key take-away’s is that ~90% of traffic never makes it to the second page. Search behavior research continues to show that people refine their search (ie. do a search with more keywords, long tail) instead of scrolling to the second page. When you overlap this with the “highest converting keywords by length” studies, it shows that the keyphrases with 3-4 keywords tend to convert much higher than generalized shorter-tail keywords. Managing several ecommerce clients, I can tell you that the volume (along with competition) is in short tail, the conversion is in the long-tail!

Another thing to consider is the that first position in organic results is competing with other aspects of Google’s Universal search (live feeds, Base, Places, Video, news, images, etc). The” #1 spot in search” can often actually be the 10th, 15th option (3 Adwords ads, 7 Maps ads, images/news/videos….and THEN organic). So while the #1 spot gets ~35% of the clicks of organic traffic, that same organic traffic gets 65-75% of total search volume (with 25-35% going to PPC depending on which study you look at).

Great to see people utilising the data available to them, Daniel. Though I do have a few reservations over the accuracy of the conclusions being derived from this data.

Simon makes some good points. The most important point is a point I would like clarification on.

“Are the results normalised for keyword search volume? Again, keyword search terms with higher / lower search rates could well skew results.”

From the blog post it sounds like this is not the case. This means if I was to rank first for “pens” and second for “red ballpoint pens”, I could assume that first place rankings drive a huge amount more traffic than second place rankings.

Clarification on this point would be awesome, to give this study some credibility.

Good questions, and with regards to the results, it’s a sample of all Google search traffic – we did no normalization of keyword search terms. Given the scale of data we broke down, the pens vs. red ballpoint pens discrepancy should even out. Our goal was to get as accurate a picture as possible of the overall impact of Google result position.

I wish I had access to compare these numbers to Google’s paid results, but unfortunately I do not. It would be interesting if Google came out with a comparison of top paid vs. top organic result across their network.

The methodology was pretty straightforward – we looked at all Google traffic that came into our network and broke down what percent was from what results location.

And while it’s not seasonally normalized (it is certainly a snapshot in time, although it’s over a full week so should even out any weekend vs. weekday shifts), I’m not entirely sure that would be overly relevant. The data set is large enough that individual sites’ seasonal shifts should even out.

Daniel – good stuff here… I’ll second Mike Belasco’s question though – what impact on the #1 listing did you see when a 7 pack or other vertical search results were shown vs. not? Intuitively I’d have to assume it was lower than the 35% or whatever, but I’m very curious as to how much lower.

I’d be very interested to see if/how this pattern varies if the data is broken down by types of searches, such as name searches (typing “facebook” into Google to find the Facebook web site — don’t laugh, a *lot* of people do this) as opposed to subject keyword searches (typing “shoes” into Google to find general information about shoes), etc.

I’ve seen a lot of behavior to suggest that name-searches are much more likely to select the first result than are most other types of searches, and would be interested to see whether or not the data supports that. Filtering the data to just subject-keyword searches (and perhaps other classifications of searches) might provide more interesting insight to most SEOers…

As Thogek mentioned: branded search terms get even higher CTR’s for a nr 1 results because its a navigational search. Searchers are looking for only 1 result. Opposed to non-branded informations search keywords that can have lower CTR’s due to the fact that people search for information whatever website. So the clicks are more spread over the top results. Our studies show that the last get max about 20% if the site is listed nr 1.

So the summed ctr is over-estimated for non-branded and under-estimated for branded keywords.

@Danielruby: could you clarify about the mix of keywords used in the research? Both branded, non-branded? Biased?

Keesjan, it was a mix of branded and non-branded – we applied no filters to the keyword mix.

As Thogek and Keesjan mentioned, branded search terms get a lot higher CTR which must have skewed the result. On the other hand, when Wikipedia is the #1 result, it will never receive 34% of search traffic (in my opinion).

Great article. The fact that 60% still goes to spots 2-10 gives hope to the rest, plus demonstrates that Google’s results don’t always put the most relevant results at the top.

Where are you getting your impressions data from? You don’t have direct access to how many searches took place for each keyword, only google themselves have this. So I’m guessing you’re either using Adwords keyword tool estimates or Webmaster Tools impressions data, both of which are seriously dubious in terms of accuracy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad you’ve done this study and we need more like this but I need some clarification on how you came to the CTR data before it can be taken seriously.

@jaamit, our impressions data is from search traffic coming into our ad network. Essentially, we can see tens of millions of searches each day, spread across a huge number of keywords and a wide variety of sites.

The research doesn’t make difference between Sponcored links and organic results. Is there any? I guess so…

ProClau, we didn’t look at sponsored links at all. All traffic in this study is purely organic.

thought #1 spot would get 50% click through.
but its less than 40%.

Many thanks for publishing the above data. Even with the caveats raised by other comments, it is very useful to have data made available like this.

Hmm…thanks for the stats! However, in my mind I think I remember that the #1 spot was up just above 40% in the last survey I read. Course, as I didn’t bookmark that survey, I just can’t remember where I saw that…dang it! But your numbers while lower, are more recent….so thanks!

Jim

Great works. Very helpful stats and i have a question, How can I find Google impressions values?

This data has to be slightly off, do the math. If you add all the top 20 listings percentages they equal 100.2%!! I think you guys made a boo boo somewhere.

Great article and thanks for sharing the data.
It’s a shame to see that #1 gets less than 40% of clicks. It just goes to show that it would definitely be better to have multiple pages of your website found on the search results.

I think its self fulfilling and demostrates the skewed linear usage patterns from teh page layout. If teh links were not stacked as they are now but circular (would work well in chinese) might see something different. I reckon different users would developn different habits and that in turn would affect the ranking.
thats my tyheory anyhow, and when the browsers start displaying the data differently just remember i said it first

@Austin Texas Notary Public, that should just be rounding issues. I rounded all the numbers to two spots past the decimal, so there was a bit of excess when you add them up.

Great research! I’ll translate it and publish on my site. Thanks for share this information.

This information, whether exact to the last impression or not is very helpful to those of us in SEO. You don’t know what your are missing until you find out what’s available to you. Obviously, the key here is to be sure that the keywords you are ranking for is the keywords that sell for you and not something like “oatmeal” which for some reason was a big hit on one of my clients business websites. Thanks for doing the math.

This information it’s very important, because is a proessional study. The difference between first and the second position.
If you appear in the first position you can win the double of the money instead the second.

I examples of sites who appear in 5th position instead 8 position, and the traffic value increase a lot. Maybe the double.

Paulo

I agree with Jeff Scott (you can find something of mentioned study on AOL’s search query logs here: http://www.webuildpages.com/jim/click-rate-for-top-10-search-results/).
It was August 2006… so what has changed since then? NOTHING?!
I’m sure that everything has changed in communication (i.e. social networks), multimedia sharing (i.e. images, videos, songs): so we have more opportunities to reach the top.
Nothing, instead, has changed in Google’s or others’ s.e. core algorithm: you have to provide the best user experience, to collect quotes and reach TOP ranks.

I agree with Jeff Scott (you can find something of mentioned study on AOL’s search query logs here: http://www.webuildpages.com/jim/click-rate-for-top-10-search-results/).
It was August 2006… so what has changed since then? NOTHING?!
I’m sure that everything has changed in communication (i.e. social networks), multimedia sharing (i.e. images, videos, songs): so we have more opportunities to reach the top.
Nothing, instead, has changed in Google’s or others’ s.e. core algorithm: you have to provide the best user experience, to collect quotes and reach TOP ranks.

Hi, beautiful article.
My question is:
for example for a special keyword, how can I see by the keyword external tool the number of unqiue visitors monthly?
Are they the one searched by extended or exact?
For example,
I search for “chocolate”
Global monthly Extended: 45,000,000
Global monthly Exact: 1,500,000
which is the correct value?
thank you

@Joe, global monthly exact should be people searching for “chocolate”; just the single keyword. Global monthly extended should be people with search queries containing the word “chocolate”. The 1.5 million number is the number of searches for just “chocolate” with no other words in the query (goes to show that chocolate lovers are fairly specific in their search, maybe for types, nutritional value, recipes, stores near them, etc.)

Thank you Daniel

You need to go to wwww.google.com/sktool/ then you enter your keywords you got from the google external keyword tool into the sktool to get the exact number of searches for keywords that people are actually searching for, that’s real people searching:

http://www.google.co.uk/sktool/

That’s the new tool!

Excellent analytics, wow and this is
across all industries I believe. Especially the 11 to 10 spot is nice – sweet Spot !

@Rodney: I don’t believe in Google giving exact numbers to all of us best thing is having your own sem tools running and keeping track of search volume of all keywords, that are important for you

This is really great research. However as per my personal experience with commercial keywords, I have concluded that first and second results are generally considered informative link and most people do not click over it and third position get the maximum clicks.

@danielruby Would be nice to see this research segmented by brand-non brand and 1 term versus 2 term versus 3 term analysis!

In our tool SEO Effect we use as benchmark figures 20% for non-branded fist position and 50% for branded nr 1 possiton. This helps the tool to predict on what terms the highest gap is in current traffic and possible traffic.

Thanks Daniel, Just a follow up on those statistics. I have heard that typically if all information is the same within the first three searches, the searcher will buy at the 3rd result. So, though #1 is best, #3 could be better. Anyway thanks for the statistics.

so if my understanding is correct I am supposed to use the percentage numbers above when doing keyword research in order to determine how many clicks I can expect to receive on my website.

Lets say for example that I am ranking on the first page of position number 5 for a keyword that gets searched for 8,000 times a day. That site could expect to receive 480 clicks or UVs a day being in that spot is that correct?

given the math 8,000 X .06 = 480 is that math correct?

anybody just reply to this with the correct answer

Why did they not include the click through rate? That would have bveen very simple and even more valuable because many click on sponsored results or don’t click at all. Instead they compared the allocation of index clicks.

I read somewhere if you artificially switch the first and second spot that the first slot would get fewer clicks than the average you are demonstrating here. My point here is that Google ranks these spots by keyword, content,links and other variables in their algorithym and they do a good job. Most often the one at the top should be there and people will notice it by the title and description and relationship to other quality sites that have relevant content.

Hi,

Thanks for giving me such type of information regarding click in seo.It’s really approsiable and useful information for me because i don’t know more about this techniques.

So guys thanks once again for having such type of useful information in your post.

Good work keep it on……………………….

Does this apply to paid search results as well? And if so, how about a study of cost to ctr so we can determine if it actually makes any financial sense to pay for number one.

The basic evidence showm is also reflected in my wecbsite statistics with number 1, 2 positions driving a good percentage of traffic. A small percentage of my keywords at position 9 to a 15 still recieve clicks, although this depends on the search term. Depends what people are looking for is my theory.

Hello everyone,

Thanks to the team @ Chitika.com for publishing this, so many NEED THE DATA!!!!

I have been running Organic CTR data analysis for some time now (usually until 6am as it’s bloody addictive!) so I can also, like you have, publish the research confidently with client case studies so we can show the world, or even potential clients, the value of Click Through Rate on Google Organic SERPs for the top 10 positions mainly. I have various client SERPs data from a variety of niche Industries, which is obviously valuable and proves stat data through multiple sectors, NICE!

I am rebranding my existing website, as soon as this is completed (feeling comfortable when people land on it!) I will publish my data and send you guys the URL, I don’t know if you can suggest URLs? A quick Test:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Best of luck everyone!

Cheers,

Joe

The only question I have is “Where do the maps fall into this equation?”

From the info I have seen the maps and other multimedia results in google’s universal search are breaking up the heat map on google’s page. Causing more time on site and ultimately more clicks to other parts of the page, other than the first organic, which should be good for the sponsors and google in turn.

But, I still have not seen anyone else’s numbers on what the map listing is getting, from what little data I have, “I am just a pest control guy”, the 1st position in the maps with the maps in the 1st organic position equates on average to 8% CTR to your site. But this doesn’t calculate what maybe going to the Google Places page and then on to your site.

Are there any other averages on the maps?

BTW, google webmaster tools are a little out of whack, the maps section is counted as organic positions, so your real number of organics on the first page is 10+. 7 box plus, 10 organic listings, plus 1 news/live listing, and if your signed in 2 friend suggestions. So even at bare minimum the google results with a 7 box are 17. Right?

Here is another measure of Google result position, based on click-through number
http://www.cheatad.com/2010/08/05/what-is-google-1-ranking-worth/

If both data are representative, then we can probably conclude that most of people that click on the first result also do click on other results.

This is a great article. When talking to a client I stress how important the front page of Google really is. Some just think that they need a good set of keywords. I try to change their thinking into ranking for a highly searched phrase with less competition. Why try to beat the bully at school when the little kid has just as much appeal.

Joe, you have asked a great question. The rule of thumb I’ve used is that organic gets 70% and paid (Adwords) gets 30%, but when you factor in Maps/Places listing and other elements from Google Universal search, everything changes. I haven’t yet found any published reports that specifically state what % of traffic goes to Maps (and importantly what the differences in % are between spots 1-7). One thing to keep in mind is that the primary call-to-action for maps listing ISN’T web traffic (ie. clicks), but phone calls and store visits. Ever since Google updated their Places listings and made the click actually go to the website vs. the Places page, I’m sure traffic will go up.

WOW thanks for the valuable information. I am shocked by how much the number drops off below the fold. People really are too lazy to scroll down. Good thing monitors are getting bigger and bigger. I think as the larger monitors display the lower results above the fold those will get slightly more traffic in the future.

Thank you! it is always far easier to convince people of the importance of being at the top of the SERPs with data such as that provided in this article.

So hows the plans for doing an update now that Google Instant is rolling out, that would be super and im sure has a fair bit of interest to see how the data changes.

I am so grateful for the information. It is very helpful as a commercial web designer when talking to clients in regards to fees for page one placement.

This is very good information. Very precise… Most of I have seen so far is guess, like 60 %, but no specific data.

thanks for your explanation. Maybe i can increase my chitika with your tutorial

I would like to thank you guys @chitika for putting this all together. This is an area where data is scarce and many times unscientific and mysterious about the process.

I wonder what this data would look like with Universal Search taking over the SERP’S page? It would be interesting to know if images are stealing clicks from video, web results, or if web results are losing clicks to news, video and other ways to search.

WIth our own internal data, we were getting CTR’s much lower than the ones stated above, the site is large enterprise site funded with ad’s and anchored by a strong consumer brand know more for entertainment than publishing, but nonetheless. Our internal data used approximately 6500 visitors to measure CTR data on Universal search, I am not going to get in to specifics, but there is quite a big difference now between the #1 organic web position than previously measured in your study. You can postulate on what is causing this change in search behavior at a later time. Anyway, just wanted to share that bit of information and I look forward to seeing some more studies that incorporate Universal and Local search in the mix. Since this is what is trending white hot at the moment, it would be a great time to collect data on this subject while we have the opportunity.

Great information on the value of being ranked highly on google. This will be useful to show to clients and to convience them to optimise for keywords that will get some of the action.

In my statistics 10th place we have a little jump.

[...] online. You’ve proved this in the web’s toughest language market: English.Chitika Research found that the difference between first and second place on Google is significant. In fact, a number one [...]

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[...] Research found that the difference between first and second place on Google is significant. In fact, a number one [...]

[...] clicks, while the second-ranked one will get 17 percent, wrote Edelman, citing research from Chitika. It means that Google’s own services can nudge out [...]

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[...] In fact, you could most likely get a view of your street as if you were right on the road, without having to get up and look out your window. With this high demand for local information, we found that local searches click on ads 38% more often. Put that in a blender with mobile and you get a staggering 64% more often! [...]

Excellent portrayal of the drop-off effect based on search result position. Makes one think what is the point being in spot 1001 where Google does not even display the site. Also makes one wonder what the point is in chasing for higher placement in search engine results. Unless one gets to the top 10, it doesn’t matter. And for high demand keywords, it is an extremely difficult task to get to top-10.

[...] is well-known that the top-most algorithmic link enjoys a large share of search traffic — 34%+ according to Chitika. Meanwhile, even the second link gets less than half as many clicks — less than 17%. If these [...]

I Love the way you write…thanks for publishing

[...] Chitika Researchで発表された2010年5月のデータによると、Google検索結果の1位からのトラフィックは2位の場合の約2倍だったそうです。SEOするなら1位を狙えということでしょう。ただ、業界やキーワードなどによって数値が大幅に違ってくるとも思うので、これを真に受けてなにがなんでも1位じゃないとダメということでもないと思います。 [...]

[...] measured as a percentage-change, is from the top of page 2 to the bottom of page 1. According to Chitika, a search based online advertising network, going from the 11th spot to the 10th generates a 143% [...]

Wow, this is a great graph. I’m always looking for graphs like these. The previous one I had was from 2006 and showed that the first spot got 40%. So it is nice to see that we still have continuity.

This is great information. A lot of businesses like to have this kind of information as they are building their internet marketing plans.

For more information about developing an internet marketing plan feel free to check out our website at http://InternetMarketingPlan.co/

Thanks for the post.

[...] The value of Google result positioning Read full story » 26. Aug, 2010 [...]

[...] 62% of all trafficHow much is the top spot on Google actually worth?  According to data from the Chitika network, it’s worth double the traffic of the #2 spot.In order to find out exactly how much traffic [...]

This is a very interesting read for sure, wonder how much more traffic increase will make for the internet marketing to pay off..

[...] [...]

[...] You probably have the ranking you need to get lots of customers. Let me put it another way: the top 3 spots on Google get more than 60% of the clicks. That means – if your business sells DVD players, for example – you’ll need to [...]

[...] come possiamo immaginare. Negli anni infatti abbiamo visto diverse ricerche su questo argomento ma la più recente (metà 2010, di Chitika) è tanto sintetica quanto emblematica. Niente da fare: ormai conta sempre [...]

My New Year can be brighter knowing this!

Thanks for providing the data.

I’ve been revisiting the AOL data and breaking it out by search type: navigational, informational, goods and services, comparison shoppers, etc.

You numbers agree pretty well with my “goods and services” category, which is a blend of navigational searches and comparison shoppers. The numbers I got were:

#1 33%, #2 14%, #3 12%, #4 8%, #5 6%, #6 6%, #7 4%, #8 4%, #9 4%, #10 4%

Reference: http://dougneubauer.com/2010/10/click-through-rates-and-search-classification/

[...] The Value of Google Result Positioning [...]

[...] The Value of Google Result PositioningThe top spot drove 34.35% of all traffic in one sample, almost as much as the numbers 2 through 5 slots combined, and more than the numbers 5 through 20 (the end of page 2) put together. [Source] [...]

[...] you look at these terms, and data on the value of a Google result position, it’s easy to see how the LDS church is effectively using SEO to attractive new visitors to its [...]

[...] you look at these terms, and data on the value of a Google result position, it’s easy to see how the LDS church is effectively using SEO to attractive new visitors to its [...]

[...] from a sample done by the Chitika network, the top Google result spot drove 34.35% of all traffic [source]. Of course, don’t forget about Yahoo! and Bing… combined, they account for 28.2% of [...]

[...] Getting on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is a great first step, but as research has shown your placement on the page also has an incredible effect on the amount of traffic you drive to your [...]

[...] Getting on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is a great first step, but as research has shown your placement on the page also has an incredible effect on the amount of traffic you drive to your [...]

[...] Getting on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is a great first step, but as research has shown your placement on the page also has an incredible effect on the amount of traffic you drive to your [...]

[...] Getting on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is a great first step, but as research has shown your placement on the page also has an incredible effect on the amount of traffic you drive to your [...]

[...] Getting on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is a great first step, but as research has shown your placement on the page also has an incredible effect on the amount of traffic you drive to your [...]

Nice site you got here, very awesome and good content. Thanks!

Many people talk about Chitika, now desperate to try to join Chintika. Is it easy?

Great stats – quite shocking to see the difference in traffic between position #1 and #2 is double! Also don’t forget conversion optimisation too, there’s no point sitting on top if no one is converting

True – but this whole metric has changed with the Google changes at the end of 2010 don’t you think? You have to browse down past the paid ads and the local map listings before you can see the number 1 organic result.

I think the point about the new “places” mapping is very valid. Are there any plans to repeat the study?

Daniel, the one piece of data I would be interested to see is IF, when a search contains a Wikipedia entry (which is often in the TOP spot), how do the numbers then “fall out.” My GUESS would be that many people IGNORE the Wikipedia entry and click on the next NO Wiki entry. Next time you guys examine the data, it would be interesting if you see what THOSE results looked like. http://www.FredGleeck.com

[...] valuable was that? A study last May by Daniel Ruby of Chitika, an online advertising network of 100,000 sites, found that, on [...]

[...] valuable was that? A study last May by Daniel Ruby of Chitika, an online advertising network of 100,000 sites, found that, on [...]

[...] short-term result? A #1 ranking for thousands of highly-competitive terms (#1 organic results get about 35% of all clicks). The long-term result? Google has already tweaked the algorithm and for most terms, the retailer [...]

[...] A study last May by Daniel Ruby of Chitika, an online advertising network of 100,000 sites, found that, on  average,  34 percent of Google’s traffic went to the No. 1 result, about twice the percentage that went to No. 2. [...]

[...] A study last May by Daniel Ruby of Chitika, an online advertising network of 100,000 sites, found that, on  average,  34 percent of Google’s traffic went to the No. 1 result, about twice the percentage that went to No. 2. [...]

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[...] about how much traffic each organic search position returns to a site, but I’ll use the Chitika Insights numbers as a [...]

[...] valuable was that? A study last May by Daniel Ruby of Chitika, an online advertising network of 100,000 sites, found that, on [...]

[...] because the top 2 items (that’s right, 2) may well capture a majority of the clicks.  Recent SEO research by Chitika showed that on average, the top 2 sites took 51% of traffic, the top 5 took 76% and the top 10 took [...]

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The distribution looks like it approximates Zipf’s law. I suspect that if you looked at Bing or Yahoo–or for that matter the search results from other countires you’d see a similiar distribution.

Thanks for sharing this it’s very interesting!

[...] TEXTO a não perder: The Dirty Little Secrets of Search. O estudo original também está [...]

[...] Chitika Insights | The Value of Google Result Positioning How much is the top spot on Google actually worth? According to data from the Chitika network, it’s worth a ton – double the traffic of the #2 spot, to be precise. [...]

[...] based on a sample of 8,253,240 impressions across the Chitika advertising network in May, 2010.  Article by Daniel [...]

I think the most interesting question by far is how Chitika was able to gather the data used for this research. Although Google provides webmasters with (however unreliable) data about their SERPs on particular search phrases, Chitika, being a third-party to the process, has no direct knowledge of the actual SERP.

Daniel says: “we looked at a sample of traffic coming into our advertising network from Google and broke it down by Google results placement.”

Since for a third-party to know the position would require repeating the search, collecting the data for 8,253,240 searches would require 8,253,240 repeat searches which is about 8000 times more than Google would normally allow per day, so would it be a research 22 years in the making? Definitely not, so does Chitika look at the mouse position when the user first opens the page coming from Google?

Apart from the fact that the vertical mouse pointer position may be skewed by the amount of ads on Google’s search result page, it would require Chitika to run JavaScript that’s spying on mouse clicks on publisher’s sites over the entire page and not only the Chitika’s ad rectangle.

Not only this would be an invasion of privacy but also, in order to register position/clicks reliably, the JavaScript would require a lot of processing power (on visitors’ computers) which would lead to publishers’ sites appearing to be sluggish and unresponsive which may also lead to less traffic on the site, increased bounce rates and conflicts with functionality of the other ad networks.

So, Daniel, I think you owe it to the publisher’s community (and I think advertisers may be interested in this as well) to explain exactly how Chitika was able to get a hold of the data used in this research!

Peace!
Scriptster

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any idea how these numbers compare to klicks of ads on top and right of google resulte page? thanx alot!

Great article on position vs % of search traffic. Although for Australia, google seems to have the incorrect results displayed.

This is abundant information.A lot of businesses like to accept this affectionate of advice as they are architecture their internet business plans.Great commodity on position vs % of chase traffic.And for aerial appeal keywords, it is an acutely difficult assignment to get to top-10.

nice information

Pure SEO BS, no real business data or value. Being number one with a sucky site mean nothing.

7 Things not Taken into Consideration

1. Presence of Ad words bidding for that keyword and competition level
2. Presence of Google traffic stealing network: You Tube Videos, Google News, Google 3. Please, Google Maps, etc”
4. Relevancy of short tail keyword vs. long tale: Christmas gift vs. Christmas 2011 or Christmas for kids
5. Organic Result Text “Official Site for Christmas®” vs. “Welcome to Christmas.com”
6. Community Engage on Social Media “Christmas in DC Group on Facebook”
7. Quality and intelligence level of Traffic “Dumb noobs vs. research savory users”

All of these factors play a much bigger role then keyword position.

1. Presence of Ad word bidders and competition:
If they are a lot competition for a keyword, sponsored ads dominate the result “1 and 2 at the top, and 5 to the right”. These sites usually have more traffic then the number 1 and 2. Some of the site being bidding on in Ad words may also be found in the Serp at position 2, 3, or 4″

I have seen on many occasions where a site at position 3 using Ad words dominated the number on site in traffic 2 to 1.

2. Presence of Google Traffic Stealing Content Networks:
In any small niche Google is famous putting it’s on content at the top of the SERP. From first hand experience I’ve seen a traffic drop of over 20% to all sites once a You Tube video was added to the stop of the SERPs and even more for Google Places. Google new doesn’t cause as much of a drop depending on the niche.

3. Relevancy of keyword: Some keyword split traffic into various sections. Demographic, Date base “2010, 2011, location based etc”. Number one for a short tell, when no one really use the short tell, or the short tell is just a starting based for a long tail.

4. One of the most important things silly SEOer over look is The Test the user see. If site one has a generic Welcome to Site.com SERP heading while site two have Keyword Name Office Site and a ® sign, Site still will get way more traffic.

5. Community engagement on social media. Some keywords command a community, and if site 5 has control over that community on a social media site, they could send out info on Facebook or other social media site before the users go to Google. Weekly or Daily updates of Commons search terms with link to their site.

I personally have seen a site which ranks number 9, but the site has a large Facebook Fan Page. They receive triple the amount of traffic as the number 1 spot, because they reach users before then need to search with the info they need. Matter of fact they reduced average amount of monthly Google Searches for that keyword

6. Quality of Traffic: Being number for BS or receiving most of the BS traffic is just a waste of bandwidth “Chitika might like this”. Most intelligent, buying surfers visit multiple site and some even disregard number 1.

I find that I myself often disregard the number 1 spot unless it’s dead on to what’s I’m looking for?

Why?
First:
It’s usually over monetized “Ad sense looking like Site Navigation, tons of ads to go through to find content” or it’s trying to sell you something “usually free or cheaper in a lower site” or persuade you to buy something.

Second:
It’s usually heavily SEOed, meaning sometimes it doesn’t make sense “unless you’re a Google BOT”,

Third
From experience the best results are not always on the top. Being aware of SEO I know that the first page is usually owned by the company with the largest SEO budget “and they usually need to pay for that budget with your money “more sales or Ad clicks, less content”. These depend on the niche.

6. If you traffic is non internet Savoy fool, you can do great with number one, but if they are intelligent, number 1 is most of the time just a speed bump on their continued search Unless Number is great and the best. So re click data is definitely needed to determine true impact. I.e. “click on number one, then click back then click on number 5”

Also don’t forget that unless natural Organic “not SEO optimization” growth pushed the site to the top, the site pretty much suck:
Content, layout, usability is almost of all is sacrificed for SEO rankings to get to the number on spot
Most of the back links are generate for the site it’s self “so user votes for the best site is Fake”
Keyword Stuffing, irrelevant verbiage targeted for bots all over the site,
Site Navigation looks like it’s pulled from Google Keyword Tool,
Ton of unless component that help SEO.
Few back links to relevant sources “i.e. Competing Sites with better content on the subject”

Just my opinion. By the numbers charts like this don’t express the real people.

[...] conduzido por Daniel Ruby, da consultoria Chitika, finalmente deu dimensão ao que já se sabia: a importância de figurar nas primeiras posições da busca no [...]

[...] however, say Penney likely reaped substantial rewards from the paid links. How valuable was that? A study last May by Daniel Ruby of Chitika, an online advertising network of 100,000 sites, found that, on [...]

[...] the time, effort and expense?  There is little doubt about the value of a number one ranking (http://insights.chitika.com/2010/the-value-of-google-result-positioning/) but much of this data is driven by consumer, not B2B products.  Nor is there any doubt that B2B [...]

[...] The #1 position in Google was shown to generate twice as much traffic as the #2 position. With #1 driving in 34.35 percent of the traffic, being #1 equaled the amount generated by positions 2, 33, 4 and 55 combined. It was shocking to find how big of a jump the traffic volume was from #1 to #2 and when looking at the sites below #2 it was astonishing. (view the survey here) [...]

[...] valuable was that? A study last May by Daniel Ruby of Chitika, an online advertising network of 100,000 sites, found that, on [...]

[...] tableau ci-dessous (source Chitika Insights) indique le taux de clic selon la position obtenue sur la 1ère page de Google. La 11ème position [...]

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[...] search ranking matters; remember Chitka’s research shows that 34% of users click on Google’s top result, >50% the top 2 results and ~97% on [...]

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[...] of people still use G, when it comes to doing any research online. In fact, I read an article from Chitika, that did some in depth research on what a number 1, 2 and 3 position actually meant in terms of [...]

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[...] The study was done using data from the Chitika ad network that serves three billion monthly ad impressions on the Web across 100,000 sites. The company compared it against a similar study they did last year for Google position results from desktop computers. [...]

[...] The study was done using data from the Chitika ad network that serves three billion monthly ad impressions on the Web across 100,000 sites. The company compared it against a similar study they did last year for Google position results from desktop computers. [...]

[...] The study was done using data from the Chitika ad network that serves three billion monthly ad impressions on the Web across 100,000 sites. The company compared it against a similar study they did last year for Google position results from desktop computers. [...]

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[...] Chitika Insights estimates that roughly 35 percent of those searching for a specific item will click on the No. 1 search result for that search term. Thus, it’s important to rank highly in search engines. The question is how? Although I could write thousands of pages on the subject of SEO, today I’m choosing to focus on the core foundation of the subject: quality content. [...]

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[...] The study was done using data from the Chitika ad network that serves three billion monthly ad impressions on the Web across 100,000 sites. The company compared it against a similar study they did last year for Google position results from desktop computers. [...]

[...] The study was done using data from the Chitika ad network that serves three billion monthly ad impressions on the Web across 100,000 sites. The company compared it against a similar study they did last year for Google position results from desktop computers. [...]

[...] no estudo da Chitika, a distribuição dos cliques na primeira página de resultados é a [...]

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[...] Predatory search tying is when the dominant search advertising business leverages its market power to “hardcode” algorithmic search results to guarantee Google content (like Google Maps or Google Places) the top search result ranking and the 34% of clicks/traffic that such a top ranking confers (See Chitka’s Research). [...]

[...] Frage ist berechtigt und mag durch folgende Zahlen beantwortet werden: Eine 2010 veröffentlichte Studie des „Online Advertising Networks“ Chikita gab an, wie viele nach der Suche mit Google auf das erste, zweite, dritte … Suchergebnis [...]

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