It’s the question of the decade – how much traffic will I get if I rank N’th in Google?
In an attempt to measure the length of this metaphorical piece of string, Slingshot SEO have produced a new behavioral study – one of the biggest of its kind. Using a wealth of statistics from their client databank, they were able to estimate the average percentage of clicks that search engine page results get, per ranking.
These results represent click-through-rates for standard google.com search engine page results. If, like me, you initially added up all the percentages on the curve and thought “wait a second, these don’t add up to 100%…”, it’s because 47.68% of searchers, when presented with a results page, don’t actually click on any result – they scan for information and then search again until they find what they are looking for.
Blended search (images, news and video) is being integrated increasingly often with Google’s standard search results. A very important finding to acknowledge is that Click-through rates lowered across all rankings on blended SERPs.
I predict that this chart will be referenced to-death on digital marketing blogs over the coming weeks as it represents a huge step in the valuation of blended search rankings.
Casey Szulk, one of the key men behind the research, added that “The study was intended to be used as a guideline, and the CTR curve should not be treated as absolute.”
Apart from rankings, there are a number of important factors which can influence your click-through rate. I’ll hopefully get into discussing this in more detail in another post over the next week or so.
Until then, the full study by Slingshot SEO is available here, and is well worth a read!