Statistics - how many people go beyond P1 of SERPs?

[arcasmia]

Hi All

The thread title pretty much sums up the question:

I'm looking for some figures on how many people bother to go beyond P1 of SERPs in the main SE's. It maybe varies KW to KW but I'm sure there will be an average somewhere. Preferably with some backup to the answer

Anyone have any ideas or help please?

Cheers
Mark

[cassidywilliams]

In 2008 it was hardly anyone: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/w...atmap-2008.jpg

So I imagine today it's even less.

People would only go past P1 if the search term is something unusual and doesn't have relevant results.

[Khadaji]

I personally go several pages deep when I'm searching for 'keyword' + reviews, or 'keyword' + bonus.

[JohnMcCabe]

I've read several of those studies where the end result says no one goes beyond page one. All of the ones I've read share one of the following flaws.

> They attempt to draw conclusions from a huge sample size without making any attempt to account for the intent of the search. If someone is looking for a simple answer, such as the definition of a word or a currency conversion rate, the odds of finding the desired result in the top slot are high. There's no reason to go lower. The same reasoning would apply to searches for specific companies. For that matter, many people still type urls into the search bar.

> They use very small samples, using relatively sophisticated searchers with defined tasks. The search behavior of a someone looking for one specific detail or bit of information is going to be different than someone simply trying to learn about a topic or find a useful review. Many eye-tracking studies have this characteristic.

Like a previous poster, I'll go several pages deep quite often. I've learned that the most useful information may not be the most highly optimized. If I don't find anything promising after scanning 4-5 pages of results, I'll change the search query. That usually means moving further out in the long tail.

Information on search behavior of buyers within a given niche market would be far more useful to most marketers than overall click behavior of the universe at large.

Unless, of course, your "product" is #1 ranking on Google...

[russellprisco]

I also would like to know the exact statistic and the details.

I've seen all sorts of numbers out there, and am looking to find the source of these statistics.

Thanks in advance,

Russell =)

[patey88]

In December 2010, one of my sites had 2611 google organic visits where I could see enough information to know what SERP position the visitor clicked on.

Positions 1 through 10: 1983 visits
Positions 11 through 20: 300 visits
Positions 21 through 30: 141 visits
Positions 31 and beyond: 187 visits

To break down the "beyond" a little bit, I looked at positions 31, 41, 51, etc.

31 - 7 visits, 41 - 5, 51 - 6, 61 - 3, 71 - 1, 81 - 0, 91 - 2, 101 - 1

In case you're interested in the breakdown of the top 10 positions:

1 - 434 visits, 2 - 259, 3 - 255, 4 - 268, 5 - 168, 6 - 154, 7 - 130, 8 - 104, 9 - 101, 10 - 110

-- Patey

[JDArchitecture]

Originally Posted by patey88

In December 2010, one of my sites had 2611 google organic visits where I could see enough information to know what SERP position the visitor clicked on.

Positions 1 through 10: 1983 visits
Positions 11 through 20: 300 visits
Positions 21 through 30: 141 visits
Positions 31 and beyond: 187 visits

To break down the "beyond" a little bit, I looked at positions 31, 41, 51, etc.

31 - 7 visits, 41 - 5, 51 - 6, 61 - 3, 71 - 1, 81 - 0, 91 - 2, 101 - 1

In case you're interested in the breakdown of the top 10 positions:

1 - 434 visits, 2 - 259, 3 - 255, 4 - 268, 5 - 168, 6 - 154, 7 - 130, 8 - 104, 9 - 101, 10 - 110

-- Patey

Patey,
Can you share what software/service gives you that data?
Thanks

[patey88]

Originally Posted by JDArchitecture

Patey,
Can you share what software/service gives you that data?
Thanks

Sure! It's a combination of google analytics and brute force.

You can make google analytics collect full referral paths, by following the instructions I wrote a while back in this post:
Finally it's converting

The next step is to make a custom report using Source/Medium as the first dimension, drilling down to User Defined Value (where your full referral path lives) as the second dimension. For metrics I usually show Visits, Pages/Visit, Avg. Time on Site, Avg. Time on Page, % New Visits, Bounce Rate, and Goal Completions.

Okay, so, you view this report for whatever time period you're interested in.

Click "google / organic" in the Source/Medium column to drill down.

Now you see a list of user-defined values that are the full referral paths. The format varies depending on where the search came from. When a visitor actually went to google.com and typed in a query, you get a path like this:

hxxp://www.google.com/url?...bunch of stuff...

Within that "bunch of stuff" will be a parameter like "&cd=1", for example. That tells you your result was in position 1.

Your keyword is buried in there too, but the next step is more readable if you click the dropdown to make the second column show Keyword.

So now you can use the filter feature at the bottom of the list to look for keyword results in a certain position.

Filter User Defined Value containing &cd=1& ...and you'll see everything where you were in position one. (You want that final ampersand to keep your filtered results from including 11, 12, etc.)

The brute force part was when I filtered for the different positions, one by one, and wrote the total visits down for each.

Good luck with it all. -- P.

[russellprisco]

Originally Posted by patey88

In December 2010, one of my sites had 2611 google organic visits where I could see enough information to know what SERP position the visitor clicked on.

Positions 1 through 10: 1983 visits
Positions 11 through 20: 300 visits
Positions 21 through 30: 141 visits
Positions 31 and beyond: 187 visits

To break down the "beyond" a little bit, I looked at positions 31, 41, 51, etc.

31 - 7 visits, 41 - 5, 51 - 6, 61 - 3, 71 - 1, 81 - 0, 91 - 2, 101 - 1

In case you're interested in the breakdown of the top 10 positions:

1 - 434 visits, 2 - 259, 3 - 255, 4 - 268, 5 - 168, 6 - 154, 7 - 130, 8 - 104, 9 - 101, 10 - 110

-- Patey

So close to 76% were all on page one.

Thanks Patey

[hotftuna]

If 76% were just page one, and you ranked page two or three for a term with enough search volume, you can get some good traffic.

I have a site that makes $ with a rank of #32 for a very popular term.

[flx89]

having lot of keywords it's best