I was never convinced by the AOL data showing 42% of people clicked on the number 1 listing. Apparently it was just for organic clicks but that still makes the figure misleading and almost useless.
What most people want to know is the number of people they are likely to get visiting their site if it ranks at number 1. Knowing this figure and your conversion rate it is easy to decide how valuable a number 1 ranking is likely to be and decide how much you want to pay to get there.
Hitwise have kindly provided this figure today when they analysed the GoCompare.com “penalty”. Looking at the chart you can see that for a competitive term such as “car insurance” (full of PPC ads) around 17% of the traffic clicked on the number 1 result.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Patrick,
It seems that you are generalizing the fact that #1 position gets %17 CTR. You can’t make any wider predictions based on just one query and website. Any query / website will have completely different results. There is no way to predict what CTR you get when you get to the top for your keyword.
e.g. I am guessing that searches for brand name will result in much greater CTR on the brand website that is usualy on the top. In comparison search for generic word like car insurance will have lower CTR as the user has not made his mind which company to choose for his car insurance.
Janusz
Find me on Twitter
I am generalising but I think that the figure is going to be fairly close to this for non-branded competitive search terms.
More comments from Patrick AltoftThat 17% is not as high as I would have predicted. Pretty interesting though. It is still a serious competitive edge.
It also depends how compelling is your title and description in SERPs and how crap are others. You can be #1 with crap title & desc and all the guys below you can be taking all the traffic. It just seems to me that you can’t put any good estimate on that figure. Of course I can’t find any facts to back it up. Someone would have to do a proper research using bidding on Adwords to get impressions stats + having the site ranked on some generic keywords.
Is this 14% of PPC or 14% of the organic searches. I am more interested in what is the % or visitors clicking on the #1 position in the organic results.
thanks
Michael
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This is 17% of all traffic to that term so PPC & Organic clicks are included. The link in the post to the AOL data suggests 43% of searchers who use the organic results click on the first listing.
More comments from Patrick AltoftPatrick, you are then suggesting that the 43% AOL study is flawed or inaccurate? I have my own opinions about anything from a closed environment like AOL. I would be more interested in results using Google or Yahoo (and maybe MSN). I strive to be ranked #1 on my key terms like nipple jewelry or body jewelry. I am on the first page for the former, not even close for the latter.
I have been #1 for many key terms and I have seen traffic, and more importantly sales, dip dramatically when you fall off of position 1. My SEO guy is a guru and has brought be back from the brink of extinction. That said, sales still lag. Maybe it is “the economy stupid!”
Nice blog, thanks for letting me ask my questions.
Michael
Find me on Twitter
The AOL data is for organic listings so it makes it impossible to calculate traffic based on search volume.
Also I only ever use Google data because they have a 90% market share. Anything else is inaccurate.
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