SERPS certain share of clicks?

7 replies
  • SEO
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I'm trying to get out it how much on average does spots 1-10 get their share? Obviously #1 would be pretty high but is there like an average? I'm trying to estimate how much traffic I might get if I was #10 for a keyword vs #1 on google's keyword tool for "Exact" matches. I know that's a generalization but I'm doing KW research for a niche

So if Exact matches gave me 10,000 global searches and #10 spot was getting clicked 20% of the time on avg, would that mean a good estimate would be 2,000 visits?
#clicks #serps #share
  • Profile picture of the author peter gibson
    I had this laying around my hard drive after some research a few months back, it may be what you're looking for.

    Google Result/Percentage
    1 / 34%
    2 / 16%
    3 / 11%
    4 / 7%
    5 / 6%
    6 / 5%
    7 / 4%
    8 / 3%
    9 / 2%
    10 / 2%

    I rounded off these percentage figures, and if I remember correctly that data was compiled through a study by Chitika. I can tell you that my own data from my network of sites almost mirrors the above numbers in traffic, when a site moves positionally on page 1.
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  • Profile picture of the author Director J
    Yes that's what I was looking for, thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi Director J,

    First let me say that not all searches result in a click, so you cannot simply use a percentage of clicks to determine average traffic rates for a keyword. Roughly half of all searches do not result in a click at all. Often folks will modify their keyword query to refine the results be fore clicking on a listing. Since CTRs vary a great deal from one keyword to the next, you should consider the average to be a very rough indicator.

    Here are some CTRs based on the largest dataset ever made public by a search engine:

    Position CTR
    1. 22.97%
    2. 06.48%
    3. 04.63%
    4. 03.30%
    5. 02.67%
    6. 02.20%
    7. 01.85%
    8. 01.64%
    9. 01.55%
    10. 01.63%

    Source: AOL leaked search data
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    • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
      Originally Posted by dburk View Post

      Hi Director J,

      First let me say that not all searches result in a click, so you cannot simply use a percentage of clicks to determine average traffic rates for a keyword. Roughly half of all searches do not result in a click at all. Often folks will modify their keyword query to refine the results be fore clicking on a listing. Since CTRs vary a great deal from one keyword to the next, you should consider the average to be a very rough indicator.

      Here are some CTRs based on the largest dataset ever made public by a search engine:

      Position CTR
      1. 22.97%
      2. 06.48%
      3. 04.63%
      4. 03.30%
      5. 02.67%
      6. 02.20%
      7. 01.85%
      8. 01.64%
      9. 01.55%
      10. 01.63%

      Source: AOL leaked search data
      Hi Don,

      According to Google Webmaster tools the figures that Peter posted are very accurate. It's not as much data as I'm sure was leaked by AOL, but across 12 of my sites, all of which have several #1 positions, the average percentage of traffic received is 36% of all impressions for #1 and 15% for #2.

      I realize that my 12 sites is nothing compared to AOL's dataset, but I have confirmed these numbers with several other webmasters and the percentages are very close. Here are some statistics for several of my websites via WMT.

      Position in Search Results: 1 | Impressions: 1600 | Clicks: 720 | CTR: 45%
      Position in Search Results: 2 | Impressions: 260 | Clicks: 46 | CTR: 18%

      Position in Search Results: 1 | Impressions: 2600 | Clicks: 1040 | CTR: 40%
      Position in Search Results: 2 | Impressions: 110 | Clicks: 23 | CTR: 21%

      Position in Search Results: 2 | Impressions: 1000 | Clicks: 260 | CTR: 26%
      Position in Search Results: 3 | Impressions 210 | Clicks: 16 | CTR: 8%

      Position in Search Results: 2 | Impresions: 720 | Clicks: 170 | CTR: 24%
      Position in Search Results: 3 | Impressions: 140 | Clicks: 12 | CTR: 9%

      These are just 4 different keywords out of many, but it confirms to me at least that you get a higher percentage of traffic for a #1 position than the AOL dataset implies.
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      • Profile picture of the author dburk
        Originally Posted by Jacob Martus View Post

        Hi Don,

        According to Google Webmaster tools the figures that Peter posted are very accurate. It's not as much data as I'm sure was leaked by AOL, but across 12 of my sites, all of which have several #1 positions, the average percentage of traffic received is 36% of all impressions for #1 and 15% for #2.

        I realize that my 12 sites is nothing compared to AOL's dataset, but I have confirmed these numbers with several other webmasters and the percentages are very close. Here are some statistics for several of my websites via WMT.

        Position in Search Results: 1 | Impressions: 1600 | Clicks: 720 | CTR: 45%
        Position in Search Results: 2 | Impressions: 260 | Clicks: 46 | CTR: 18%

        Position in Search Results: 1 | Impressions: 2600 | Clicks: 1040 | CTR: 40%
        Position in Search Results: 2 | Impressions: 110 | Clicks: 23 | CTR: 21%

        Position in Search Results: 2 | Impressions: 1000 | Clicks: 260 | CTR: 26%
        Position in Search Results: 3 | Impressions 210 | Clicks: 16 | CTR: 8%

        Position in Search Results: 2 | Impresions: 720 | Clicks: 170 | CTR: 24%
        Position in Search Results: 3 | Impressions: 140 | Clicks: 12 | CTR: 9%

        These are just 4 different keywords out of many, but it confirms to me at least that you get a higher percentage of traffic for a #1 position than the AOL dataset implies.
        Hi Jacob,

        The AOL data is from a dataset of over 9,000,000 searches. As far as I know there is no other dataset publicly available that approaches this scale. Based on that alone I would think it to be the more accurate averages. However, having said that you will see CTRs vary wildly from one keyword to the next. Many longer phrases will result in very high CTRs as compared to the averages while ambiguous terms will have extremely low CTRs. As I said results vary by keyword.
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael Nguyen
    I can also confirm dburk and jacobs. I have a few sites at number 1. for their keywords and this is what Google webmasters tool reveals.

    Regarding the aol data and other test. I can't see them mention anything about PPC ads if any. Todays search is full of PPC adds so that aol data is abit behind so use it with caution.

    Don't forget your display url, title, description has to be top notch otherwise you chould lose your click to # 2 if you had a bad one.

    Search is more art than science, you gotta be testing all the time. My problems with seo is having to compete with google products because that WILL be seen as a "ranking spot". Usually those google product images occupy above the fold.
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