Today on SearchEngineLand, I caught this graphic:
Despite my great trust in all things Danny Sullivan (yes, I know this technically comes via Elliance), I've got to say that I find this somewhat hard to believe. Do 28% of all searchers really click on results within page 2 or 3? In my experience, the traffic difference from position #1 to position #11 is far more disparate - something closer to 1/100th of the visits.
I'd be extremely curious to see truly accurate and industry-wide data on all of the following:
- Average CTR on positions #1-#40 (at each of the major engines)
- Average CTR on ad listings vs. organic listings (at each of the major engines)
- Comparison of visitor behaviors from paid search vs. organic search
- Comparison of visitor behaviors from top 3 listings vs. bottom 7-30 listings
- Percentage of CTR on onebox and other vertical-style results
- Percentage of traffic driven by each of the 4 major search engines (I'm somewhat suspicious of ComScore's numbers - Google lost share at Microsoft's expense?)
If anyone has this data, or links that point to valuable sources, please do share. I suspect that my limited experience in a few hundred SERPs is no match for truly robust, industry-wide data.
BTW - Loving the vacation. I have my heart set on this place for the wedding, but Mystery Guest remains open-minded.
UPDATE: Check out this post from SEOBlackhat, including a tool based on the AOL Leaked Clickthrough Data.
The figures are from the iprospect search engine user behaviour 2006 paper. The paper is from April 06 but the results are from a survey in January 2006. That's more than a year and half ago.
Percentage of users that clicked within the first page:
So yes, a lot could have changed in this intervening time but personally, I think the results are accurate insofar as:
I know the research, but I can't recall if the question was asked as:
"Do you ever click on to the second page?"
or as:
"How many times would you say you click on to the second page?"
or as:
"Here's a list, could you keep score for a few days on how many times you click on the second page?"
Makes quite the difference I'd guess...
Heh -- "trust" in me doesn't come into play. It's a stat from someone else's survey and not "technically" from Elliance but as explained in the graphic, from iProspect (and thanks, Shor, for adding the link). Now is the iProspect study not "truly accurate," as you suggest.
Dunno.
Search Illustrated is one look at a particular figure. It's kind of hard to debate and dissect a particular stat in an illustration. Elliance clearly cited the source, so I guess it's left to the reader to pull up the study if they want to go into it more.
Looking at it myself, I tend to be more dubious of surveys based on what people remember than how they actually react. I suspet more people are saying they go to the second page than really do. But then again, it's not a percentage of search thing.
IE, they're being asked if they go to the second or third page at all, yes or not, not the percentage of time they do. Now, anyone out there want to say they NEVER go past the first page of results? Right, of course you do -- occasionally. So it might very well be true to say that based on one survey, 62 percent say they have clicked on a search result past the first page (which is what the graphic says). But the other way to look at it is of all searches that happen, what percentage involve a click on the second and third pages. That will likely be low.
Personally, I haven't cared about the percentages from any survey for a very long time. That's because before we had them, most search marketers figured out you needed to be in the first page or results, and that you saw a massive drop-off the further down on that list you were.
But if you want those stats, they're out there. Here's Jim giving you data off AOL's set.
Over at our place, Study Says Get In Top 5 Not Top 10 & Search Engines May Need To Highlight Official Sites was a recent but very small study of 18 people from Microsoft.
There's other stuff out there. Of course, rather than drag up the older things, probably more useful to watch for the latest new ones to come up.
Percent of traffic? I'm gutted. Our search engine popularity category archives all the stuff we've done on surveys from comScore, Hitwise, NetRatings and Compete. I'm about to do another side-by-side with them as I've done in the past, too.
As for comScore, it's actually backing up the same thing that Compete saw. That's two different players seeing that rise. comScore Also Reports Microsoft Search Search Rise from us goes into depth about it, plus explains that while the percentage of searches Microsoft has gained, Google's overall number still went up.
Overall, you have to question any stat you see. When we report them, sometimes we just put a stat out there without much comment -- here's the latest Click Fraud Index figures, for example, for what they're worth. Some think not much. Here's the latest click fraud figures from Google, for what they're worth. Some don't want to trust them. Sometimes, we dive more into a survey to dissect the figures depending on the time and interest we have, plus how important we think it should be done.
Have you checked the AOL database? Sometimes that brings interesting numbers (though you do have to take it with a grain of salt).
You could also check your logs to get a look at how many people reach your site through a query where you land on page 2 (it's hard when ALL of your keywords bring you on page 1, but maybe "a friend of a friend" has a site where you could check :D). I put together a small tool that does that (among other things): https://oyoy.eu/site/sereferrer/#r
The AOL data is good, but it's major downfall is the fact that it's AOL - a different demographic to Google users.
Real data from Google is essential for us all to fully understand the CTR of natural listings.
Today I thought I'd create a tool to give us this data:
https://www.groupmind.co.uk
Give it a try, if everyone gives a little, we could all gain a lot.
Danny's explanation makes sense. If the data is from a survey of what people "say" they do vs what they "actually" do, than I can see it.
I go past the 1st page all the time, but I probably click on 1st page results 10x more than anything on page 2.
I use the AOL data too.
As it has been pointed out, those numbers are based on a iProspect study from 2006.
Since I couldn't get access to Jim's website, the AOL data shows the following CTR in % based on ranking position (don't know if exactly the same numbers are used on Jim's website):
Numbers will perhaps be a little different for Google because of layout etc., but the trend will be the same.
A study from MSN called "The influence of caption on clickthrough patterns in Web search" shows a graph with the approx same numbers for a number one spot when a stereotypical informational query is made.
Paid vs Organic clicks:Numbers I am aware of shows ca 72/28 (organic/paid in Google), but those numbers are a little bit old (2004).
Edit: Hm. That numbered list isn't showing correctly.
Those are the AOL numbers I saw - where did you get the organic v. paid figures from? It's the same sort of number I always use, but I can never remember the source data.
I think that an acurate answer to the "how many click thru from second page" question can be found by examining two numbers and following these steps...
1) Take the amount of people responding to this post who are talking about "the first page and second page stuff" (these represent people who click on the first page of results)
2) Take the amount of people responding to this post who are talking about the lovely spot Rand has found for his wedding. (these represent the people who click on the secondand third pages of results)
3) Do math and stuff
4) The resulting numbers will illustrate that beer is yummy.
Looks like a great spot Rand :)
Ha! I knew there was an easier way...
ha ha excellent Pat, you're nuts, I like it =)
As a broad average, I tend to use the AOL data - yes it's not perfect, but 250k results is quite a big set of results. In market research I believe that any group over 1,000 respondents is considered to be statistically valid (and I realise that some of those 250k results might have been from the same people).
Anyway, that puts the 1st 4 results at 68% of clicks. And if that's true, then 28% for the later pages seems awfully high.
Having said that, I have seen low levels of traffic coming in from results quite a bit south of page 10 ...
since i track this data on my sites, why not share the data from one of them!
for all search clickthroughs, percentage of clicks per page of results:
page 1: 78%
page 2: 8%
page 3: 4%
page 4: 2%
Um... Vacation?
"BTW - I'm in Ashland, OR with Mystery Guest this week, looking at potential wedding locations for next summer, so email & blogging will both be quiet slow. However, Rebecca Kelley returns from a long trip this week, so look forward to more of her presence (along with the rest of the mozzers) while I'm away.
Give Rebecca a chance haha
On to the topic:
I would think that if that image is fact, that it would have to represent all "areas" of the web. I know when it comes to the "area" I work on, it's first page or bust. 2nd page SERP's = 1st in Yahoo! for my "area" that I focus on (imho).
Yeah, no kidding. Rand on vacation = he posts only twice a day instead of the usual 5-7.
Click-thru behaviour should correlate directly to the quality of the results (if you find what you want in position #1, you will therefore click position #1).
Therefore Yahoo, Google, ASK & Microsoft should all have very different click thru percentages, as they all have verying results quality.
Trying to aggregate all of the search engines together to make statements like "62% of search engine users clicked on a search result within the first results pages" is just meaningless without more information on sample size and type.
Thanks for the link love, Rand.
Like Danny said, our relationship with SEL is to visualize concepts related to SEO and SEM. For this particular infographic, using data from iProspect's 2006 study, we tried to pick out a stat that we find ourselves using with clients a lot. Why is it so important to be on the first page of search results? How much visibility am I really getting with a rank of 11 - or even 30? Sometimes a visual is all they need to "get it."
Realizing that it's not true click-through data, we wanted to drive the point home of how critical it is to be at the top of the first page in a time when searchers, except for rare circumstances, are so reluctant to trudge through extensive results.
We have a lot of ideas for upcoming infographics, but we're always looking for suggestions if you have input. Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas with us. Thanks! [email protected]
Danny sums it up pretty well with, "...they're being asked if they go to the second or third page at all." We've all done that. A really interesting click through study would be one that's vertical driven.
For example, like in best-optimized's comment and wellwrittenwords' research, do searches for product reviews or citations cause a greater frequency of viewing more, and deeper, results? From personal experience, visits via image searches often come from deep within the results.
A change in CTR by search type can be seen in PPC as well. For example, comparing the terms: [photoshop tutorial], [gold ring], and [search engine marketing], in Google Trends it's fairly obvious that [photoshop tutorial] is getting a substantial number of searches, yet if you run these searches through adwords click estimator that term gets the least amount of estimated clicks.
[photoshop tutorial] 3
[search engine marketing] 8-10
[gold ring] 14
Settings: English, United States, Max bids. Similar to Google Trends link.
If a straight percentage was applied to the search volumes we'd expect a much higher estimated click value for [photoshop tutorial], or maybe a lower value for [search engine marketing], but instead [gold ring] is the projected click leader. Running the terms through MSN's adlab Keyword Trends helps detail search volume further, but there [search engine marketing] is by far the stand out leader in search volume, but still recieving fewer projected clicks than [gold ring]
photoshop tutorial; search engine marketing; gold ring
04 - 2006: 3587; 66592; 4693
05 - 2006: 3732; 52844; 2792
06 - 2006: 6471; 70066; 3524
07 - 2006: 3967; 87675; 3581
08 - 2006: 3600; 75222; 4527
09 - 2006: 3609; 74848; 4916
10 - 2006: 3967; 84376; 4671
11 - 2006: 4303; 72344; 4124
12 - 2006: 3421; 78897; 5890
01 - 2007: 4178; 75926; 6826
02 - 2007: 4479; 87355; 6876
03 - 2007: 8818; 188570; 14441
What's going on? Basically we're seeing that there's not a universal CTR percentage. The person that's clicking on a #1 PPC result for [gold ring] is likely the same person that's not going past the first page of organic results. Other searches though, even if they're higher volume, generate a lower PPC click thru rate, and likely more frequent clicks from deeper within the organic results.
I personally would not place too much faith in the findings of 2,369 people who were asked to say from memory "how many results do they typically look at on a search engine before clicking on an entry." This sort of research is useful for bringing back other online user behaviour (ie one of their questions asks what you'd normally do if they do not find a relevant result - a)add more words to search query...82%, b) change search engines...13%, c) give up...3% d) new search engine & new words...bit drastic that one...2%) but not for this.
Does anyone know if there is any updated info on this topic anywhere?
I agree with Rand on this one, percentages mentioned in the article are not reality for most of the searches if you ask me...
p.l.u.r.
What I find most interesting about this issue is that it always "depends" in B2B or for purchases that are more costly do you dig deeper than you do for a pair of socks or some company to replace your windshield?
The most the cost and the more personal the purchase is to me the more liekly I am to go further down in the results. Lets not get traffic is different than quality traffic and very often being ranked at the top will get you more clicks, we know that. But many times people click on teh top few listings find that they aren't getting what they are seeking and then do a new search. So of course you get more clicks up top, but are they always the quality, and how does ranking influence CTRs in:
research queries vs. purchase queries
B2B vs. B2C
men vs. women
services vs. products
teen vs. elderly
I bet they are all differen, predicting SERP ranking CTRs is like predicting conversion rates...really depends on many factors.
that's an excellent point Wil, and I think you are totally right. I also do mostly B2B where conversions are typically worth more the B2C.
I would also like to point out something that I always seem to point out.....the CTR is NEVER only dependent on just the ranking itself. I know I sound like a broken record but I do firmly believe that if you have a well written title tag and description it will make a BIG difference. Maybe not necessarly comparing page 1 to page 2 but in terms of CTR on the first page. A #1 on Google with a non optimised (i'm talking optimised as in FOR THE USER here) will loose out on lets say a 4th position one that has an excellent descriptive and relevant title and description....It's all in the words baby!!
I was sure I read somewhere else that 90% of users only look at the first SERP and less than 2% even reach the third SERP. Does anyone know where I may have found these?
Excellent post, as usual. Just wanted to note that Optify just released a new study on CTR here: https://www.optify.net/guides/organic-click-through-rate-curve/
just checked 1 days stats and 93% of my visitors came from the first page of Google and 5% came through for the 2nd page.
I would rather to be ranked in first page, second and third page can deliver very little traffic.
I am quite suprised at 28% for the second page. Its seems high. I would love to know how this is tracked as I would assume that it would also be relative to industry number of competitors and the type of results for a given phrase.
Wishing everyone an exseollent day.
We've done a different kind of study and analysed CTR data from Google Webmaster Tools and presented averages:
https://dejanseo.com.au/position-ctr/
Great Work! Do you know of any data for PPC CTR?
Oh yeah, Rand, McMenamins has the Edgefield (17 miles east of Portland) which works well for vineyard wedding settings. (It's their main winery) Plus there's lodging on site if a large number of guests are traveling to the ceremony and want some place to stay over night.
Still, the Rogue Valley is gorgeous so if that's a lock you can't go wrong. Darn it. Now I'm sentimental for the NW.
Sorry if this is a newbish kind of question but all the talk is about page 1, 2, 3 etc based on 10 results per page, but does it make a difference to these sort of statistics if users have the number of results per page set higher than 10?
I don't know but it is an interesting point. I would assume that very few of the people had their results set at 50 or 100 instead of 10. There are very few people who even know you can do that.
Like with most applications, most don't change the default settings, but I'd assume with these types of reports it would take into account 10 listings as 1 page, regardless if the settings were set to 20, 50 or 100.
All I have to say is great post!
Never really considered the percentages before.
Hi from France
Results from the SiteMap tools show a lot of clicks from visits coming from listing way past the 10th. I've often assumed that all of these were due to a bug by which the sitemap tool registers a visit from google.fr but then calculates the position of the link using google.com - for those who didn't know these results are very different. And its totally normal for them to be different because Google gives pertinent results for the country you are searching from (I'm suprised that Google haven't done state by state versions of Google in the us)
But in the us, where most people will search with the .com, you should be able to exploit your own site map results to calculate the importance of second or third page listings. And then let us know on this thread.
French wine forever ;-)
- Neil
I think the click though percentages also depend alot on the market being searched on.
For example in a retail market, users typically will click on more results to compare prices and products, and in some fiancial markets, the users tend to stop a the first result that answers their question without needing to visit multiple sites.
I've found in those markets tend to have higher percentage of visits in the top 3 sites, and less of a tail.
Larger patterns are still true for every industry.
Conversion rates differ a lot
Interesting points made earlier about what people say they do, versus what they actually do, when it comes to clicking through on SERPs.
Reminds me of a study done a couple of years ago by Atlas on cookie deletion rates – where self-reported data was 'wildly' exaggerated compared to actual behavior.
We are missing some important user data, like number of searches. This data can easily be skewed by a users tendency to refine their query vs traveling a few pages to find what they want.
Sectioning out the data based on number of queries that a user performs or complexity of the query would yeild more useful data.
They are talking about the whole page of traffic (1-10) compared to the whole of pages 2 & 3 (results 11-30). Not position X to position Y, even so, my stats show 80 - 92 % of traffic from top ten depending on the site.The site with 80% top ten then receives a further 11% from pages two and three; the site with 92% then gets 5.5% from pages two and three.
Be interesting for someone to make a comparison based on actual SERPs position, especially for different categories and topics. I guess you'd need to see what IP the user came from, and search on the appropriate data centre (if any correlation can be made) immediately after the visitor arrives, get the position and store.
my first impression of that 28% statistic is that it seems quite high... however, it may be worth bearing in mind that the majority of searchers may not be particularly good at searching - that is, they wouldn't use advanced search operators, or even simple things like quotation marks to find a definite phrase, and as such are more likely to need to go beyond the first page of results...
Rand, I would tend to agree with your estimation. Just from experience, I've seen a huge disparity between how many people click on the first 3 listings vs. listings 4-10, and that's just on the first page. (Being that those are above the fold, and the rest are "out of sight, out of mind" for most people.) I'd venture an educated guess that the numbers drop exponentially from page 1 to page 2, and from page 2 to page 3, and so on.
My question would be...how are they coming to this conclusion? Just knowing some data from standard click-thru rates, these would be insanely high numbers. It looks like those numbers would be more accurate they were:
(Even modified, the 28% seems too high.)
I would say that the only way a company could publish truly acurate statistics on this would be to install some kind of click-tracking software on several thousand computers randomly across the country. A survey couldn't generate accurate results with something like this, because what people think they do doesn't often match with what they actually do when they are acting subconsciously (like when clicking on a search result).
If you look at it from the perpective that some of the same users clicked results both on the first page and the second page (I think that is what you mean) than these statistics do not seem to be too far off.
For example when I was researching Photoshop CS3 and trying to decide whether or not to buy it I clicked on and read almost every review up to the 4th or 5th page. I think many people when researching a product or looking for some information will often go to the second page, especially if the results on the first page are irrelevant or just not best.
I'm convinced that the data is correct. However I'm also convinced that it's presented badly enough for the general public to get a wrong impression about it.
It's not a question that people always check pages other than the first one. That's what I do - I normally get the answer from the first page. Sometimes I go to the second and third pages (and beyond).
I would have to answer to polls that I do not only look for results on the first page. But for the majority of traffic I generate, it simply is not the case. They did not ask (nor measure) how often people go to subsequent pages.
Wonderful place for the wedding! Plastic chairs look very cheap and might be unconfortable though...
oh and Rand, the wedding venue looks amaaaaazing...Overlooking the vinyard...so romantic...
Very useful data; especially at a time I'm working on performance based SEO pricing. Thank you for doing my research for me!
I belive it. I check my hittail data every day and usually find a couple links that I rank on the second or third page... sometimes even fourth.
I can't prove that my site was on X page for the viewer though. Personalized search, different DCs, and algo/index shifts could have moved things.
But I'd say that is reasonable.
What about the remaining 10% (62+28 = 90)? Do they go further and search page 4, 5 or 6?
As someone who has been using Google as a favorite SE since it appeared, I have to say I always go deeper--page 3 or 4 usually. My research as a writer depends on it. :)
Yes Podcomplex, not many ppl r aware of search operators. y use operators when google gives them the results they want? (dats wht d majority thinks). D most aware community is SEO--i suppose.
I don't have any data for you, Rand, but just wanted to say that venue looks stunning. Glad you are enjoying the break and hope you get someone coming up with some solid data on the stats you want so you can share them with us all :)
Don't know if I ever showed you where I'm getting married next year - different end of the weather spectrum - a Scottish castle: Airth Castle.
A wedding at a winery for Rand and MG and a wedding at a Scottish castle for Will.
Altogether now, "Awwww..."
The tricky question is, which will be the most unforgettable? (Because that's the one I'm gate-crashing... bwahaha)
That sounds like wine vs. whisky to me in the memory-loss stakes...
Wine vs. Whiskey, the debate that plagues my very existence!
That's an easy call in most situations for me. The beer one... That's unresolved.
Ooh, can I come?
Long way to come for your next bit of British alcohol...! It'd be awesome to have you guys over. We should try to hang out again before then (it's quite a way away still - next September).
oh for god sake is everyone getting married??? Is it just to torture us "old single birds"......flashback to Bridget Jones and her nightmare of being eaten by her own cats after she dies...
Sorry Lisa. I read somewhere that there is a tendency for people who start businesses to crave stability in their personal lives - might explain the rush. On the other hand, it might just be the average age of people in search.
There's some pretty eligible guys on the scene. Find yourself a blackhat to buy you some champagne ;)
My wife and I had our wedding last year in the rogue valley and have a ton of local wedding information if you're interested. We planned the whole thing ourselves and found lots of local gems.I have to agree that Eden Valley is a wonderful place for a wedding, or really any other event. Beyond the house and the setting, they have some fantastic wines.
Let me know if you're interested.
Totally interested! Please do email me :) I'd love to hear from someone with experience.
Eden Valley looks awesome! If you can only do this well or better, you and MG are on your way to a great wedding.
I cant get the value of click. My Estimate is Top3 results get the most clicks and some thing on the 2nd page is worthless wont get you any traffic.
The place you show for your wedding is nice :)
I wonder if that guy with the barrel, that's in the pictures in the weeding site storms weedings screaming about his wine and rolling the barrel, and falling down, hiting people along the way...
Probably not.
"Percentage of traffic driven by each of the 4 major search engines (I'm somewhat suspicious of ComScore's numbers - Google lost share at Microsoft's expense?)"
Rand, I know it's hard to believe, but some people have actually bought Windows Vista.
In my personal experience, I had a site drop from first page to second page and the visits dropped from around 300 a day to about 50, so a 6x decrease.
Positions 5-6 to positions 11-12.
And my visitors come mainly from Portugal and Brazil.
My sites get frequent visits from page 2, 3, 4 and even farther. Haven't did the calculations but I think that more than 28% of visits come from second or third pages (mostly long tail). This doesn't prove the percentage of the searchers that click on the 2nd or 3rd pages though.
I do know from my own searching that I often click to the second, third or even fourth pages. If by the fourth page I don't find what I am looking for I usually revise the search.
My calculations of the AOL data come to 90% click on the first page but this does not mean that some of these searchers did not also click results on the second page. It also has to be realized that AOL searchers are less internet and search savvy so it would seem that they would be less likely to go to the second page.
A few months ago, I was positioned on the second spot for a popular search query, and last month, I dropped to #5..
The result? the number of people visiting my page via google dropped by nearly 60%
If it drops this much between a second and fifth spot, I really doubt that 28% of people continue to the second page of results.
I have to admit that in my case, I do look at 4 of 5 pages of results usually.. but I'm an IT person, and answers to technical problems are rarely discovered within the 1st page of results.