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.
