As i mentioned yesterday on Google Rankings why should you be maximising them? we have a very strong guideline as to the distribution of search engine clicks. The Leaked AOL figures give us the following statistics:
Ranking number 1 42%
Ranking number 2 12%
Ranking number 3 9%
Ranking number 4 6%
Ranking number 5 5%
Ranking number 6 4%
Ranking number 7 3%
Ranking number 8 3%
Ranking number 9 3%
Ranking number 10 3%
The above figures are rounded and leave approximately 10 % of the clicks to go to page 2 and beyond with position 11 likely to get 1-2%. My biggest takeaway from these figures is:
- Your site is either on page 1 in Google or in internet traffic terms it is irrelevant.
- Relatively small movements up page 1 of Google can be worth a windfall in traffic eg. a move from 7th to 4th could double the number of people that see your site every day.
- The top 3 positions dominate the traffic with a combined 63% between them
Not an exact science as we are talking about averages, but a great overview of what can be expected. Of course there are exceptions that prove the rule, we use a little known tactic to outperform other sites in terms of getting a larger share of the clicks than we should for our clients.
