By Owen Fay . Posted on March 31, 2022How 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. In order to find out the value of SEO, we looked at a sample of traffic coming into our advertising network from Google and broke it down by Google results placement.
The top spot drove 34.35% of all traffic in the 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.
“Obviously, everyone knows that the #1 spot on Google is where you want to be,” says Chitika research director Daniel Ruby. “It’s just kind of shocking to look at the numbers and see just how important it is, and how much of a jump there is from 2 to 1.”
The biggest jump, percentage-wise, is from the top of page 2 to the bottom of page. Going from the 11th spot to 10th sees a 143% jump in traffic. However, the base number is very low – that 143% jump is from 1.11% of all Google traffic to 2.71%.As you go up the top page, the raw jumps get bigger and bigger, culminating in that desired top position.
| Google Result | Impressions | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2,834,806 | 34.35% |
| 2 | 1,399,502 | 16.96% |
| 3 | 942,706 | 11.42% |
| 4 | 638,106 | 7.73% |
| 5 | 510,721 | 6.19% |
| 6 | 416,887 | 5.05% |
| 7 | 331,500 | 4.02% |
| 8 | 286,118 | 3.47% |
| 9 | 235,197 | 2.85% |
| 10 | 223,320 | 2.71% |
| 11 | 91,978 | 1.11% |
| 12 | 69,778 | 0.85% |
| 13 | 57,952 | 0.70% |
| 14 | 46,822 | 0.57% |
| 15 | 39,635 | 0.48% |
| 16 | 32,168 | 0.39% |
| 17 | 26,933 | 0.33% |
| 18 | 23,131 | 0.28% |
| 19 | 22,027 | 0.27% |
| 20 | 23,953 | 0.29% |
Numbers are based on a sample of 8,253,240 impressions across the Chitika advertising network in May, 2010.
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Digital Search
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
Thos003
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?
Thos003
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?
Fernando Hal
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.
Best Article Service
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.
Carmen Brodeur
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.
Gary
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.
David
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.
James Robinson
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.
Adriana Marquees
This is very good information. Very precise… Most of I have seen so far is guess, like 60 %, but no specific data.
Psychobone
thanks for your explanation. Maybe i can increase my chitika with your tutorial
Geoff Simon
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.
Irish seo
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.
בניית אתרים
In my statistics 10th place we have a little jump.
David
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.
Jeff Hensiek
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.
Simone
This is a very interesting read for sure, wonder how much more traffic increase will make for the internet marketing to pay off..
Doug N
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/
Garrick Dunstan
Very interesting and yes I can see this. With number 4 and 3 positions I am still not seeing the traffic I expected which is why I searched for this article. And it makes sense how often do you click on result 1, 2, 3 or 10? As a writer mentioned below, it would be interesting to see how Ad Words top results affect these stats?
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