A few statistical questions... (CTR and traffic)

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I'm almost ready to get off my ass, stop reading, and get to work. I've got my plan in place and ready to execute. I'm just missing a small bit of information before I can start researching niches.

Firstly, I need an estimate of what sort of traffic to expect by landing on the front page of Google. I recall seeing a graph somewhere showing that 40-50% of searchers will visit the #1 site, but I don't recall the %s for other positions. Right now I'm operating under the base assumption that landing on the front page (at any position other than #1) will net about 10% of those searchers on average. So perhaps expect about 5k visitors per month for a keyword that gets searched 50k times.

My second question is in regards to CTR on Adsense banners. Years ago, before I was even aware of IM, I made some personal pages and threw up some Adsense banners. These had a CTR of 0.9%, which seems very low. Of course, those banners probably had terrible placement and weren't relevant to the interests of visitors.

I know that a lot of this stuff depends on many factors. CTR for example may vary by niche, I imagine. So if ballpark estimates aren't a reasonable request, please tell me about your personal experiences. I saw a guy boasting a 80% CTR the other day, largely due to banner placement, which just sounds impossible to me. But maybe in some circumstances that is perfectly reasonable. I honestly have no idea. I would like to have at least a general idea of the sort of numbers people have so I can make some kind of projections and plan around them.
#search engine optimization #questions #statistical
  • Expect ~1% and you wont be dissappointed. Dont expect more than that unless you have a solid reason to believe it will be higher.

    Also as your traffic goes up you will usually have a drop in CTR.
    • [1] reply
    • I read somewhere it goes like this :

      1. 42.13%,
      2. 11.90%,
      3. 8.50%,
      4. 6.06%,
      5. 4.92%,
      6. 4.05%,
      7. 3.41%,
      8. 3.01%,
      9. 2.85%,
      10. 2.99%,
      How Much Money is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business?

      As you can see, the lions share goes to the top spot, usually.

      As for CTR, the more traffic you get, the lower the CTR goes, and the Adsense click value as well. Does not mean a click that used to pay $1 a click will remain $1 for 20 clicks, and you will get $20 for 20 clicks. It never ever works that way.

      Also CTR is highest in product heavy sites , but if you get a high CTR that doesn't convert well, you could either get smart priced or banned eventually. Most people with huge traffic have CTRs ranging from < 1% - 3%.

      A high CTR will raise a red flag on your account and may prompt a manual review at some point.
      • [1] reply
  • Don is right and Dellco's numbers are off. That 42% is the percentage who click on ANY link, not necessarily the first one. I'm talking about SERP here.

    There was this database a few years ago by AOL of 3 months and 2.8 million searches and you can read my analysis of it. That data is fascinating actually. The number of people clicking the first organic link is 25%. Of course, this number is an average. Lots of things can increase or decrease it.

    As for Adsense, I don't know since I don't use it. I am however an Adwords advertiser and when using the content network, the very best CTR I've achieved is 2% (text ads only) and most people I know average 1 in 1000 (0.1%). It may be higher for image ads. So when I hear someone say 10% of visitors click on their ads, I'm suspicious. I certainly don't click them that often, hardly ever in fact. Maybe we are not measuring the same thing.
    • [1] reply
    • Lucid, even your analysis said that a big percent did not click on any result (50%). And that of the remainder, about half of that click the first result.

      The bottom line is - The top spot still gets a much larger share than all the other listings. And isn't that is what's important?

      I have moved from top 10 to #1 for a certain keyword and held that #1 spot for years, and along the way I can tell you that the traffic difference between #1 and all the others below is pretty disproportionate. But I don't waste my time counting the numbers, it does nothing for me.

      End of the day (I don't know about you), I do not care whether it is 20.23%, 34%, 40.35%, or 50%, but I do know the 1st spot takes a BIG cut and that is what all of us should be aiming for.

      I'm through with this argument over mathematics. Better (and more important) things to do.
      • [1] reply
  • Bottom line, yes, top spot gets the highest click rate on average. That's where you want to be. Doesn't matter what that actual percentage is.

    But I agree with Don. That percentage should be the number of clicks divided by the number of people doing the search. Quoting any other percentage simply confuses people. It confused me because, even though I did the research before, that 42% got stuck in my head. It confuses others because they find in research a keyword getting 1000 daily searches and they expect 420 clicks to their site.
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    A few statistical questions... (CTR and traffic)

    I'm almost ready to get off my ass, stop reading, and get to work. I've got my plan in place and ready to execute. I'm just missing a small bit of information before I can start researching niches. Firstly, I need an estimate of what sort of traffic to expect by landing on the front page of Google. I recall seeing a graph somewhere showing that 40-50% of searchers will visit the #1 site, but I don't recall the %s for other positions. Right now I'm operating under the base assumption that landing on the front page (at any position other than #1) will net about 10% of those searchers on average. So perhaps expect about 5k visitors per month for a keyword that gets searched 50k times.