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Search Engine Ranking Facts

How Do Search Engine Rankings Effect Your Website's Traffic?

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In August 2006, AOL released sensitive search data providing details of approximately 20 million searches preformed by 658,000 subscribers. While the AOL data obviously raises privacy concerns, it can contain useful information for search engine marketers.

Which result page gets the most clicks?

The AOL data allows us to find out how many people visit more than one result page on AOL:

As the graph above shows, 92% of the AOL users clicked on the results on the first result page. Only 4.5% clicked a result from the second result page, just slightly over 2% clicked a result on the third result page and even less people looked beyond the first three result pages.

Which search result position gets the most clicks?

The AOL data also allows us to find out which search result gets the most clicks. The following diagram shows the percentage of user clicks per search result position:

Being ranked number 1 for a keyword on the search results is best by far. Just over 47% of the users clicked on the first result. That means that the first position in the search results gets almost half of the traffic.

It this also true for Google, Yahoo, MSN or ASK.com - the other major search engines?

The numbers are for AOL users. Google, Yahoo, MSN and other major search engine users might be from a different demographic group than AOL users and they might have different search behavior. AOL users are often less tech-savvy, when compared to Google users - for example.

What does this mean to your web site?

The AOL data shows the clear advantage of being listed on the first result page. And the higher your search engine rankings are, the better.

View some examples of Custom Fit Online Solutions client top search engine rankings for competitive keywords.

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