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Google Organic SEO Click Through Rates

Ever since the famous AOL data leak of 2006 people have been endlessly quoting the same old figures when asked for amount of clicks a particular ranking gets.

Recently the data has become a lot more accurate thanks to the release of click data in Google Webmaster Tools and a new study by the Chitika ad network.

From the AOL data we can see that first place gets 42% of traffic, compared to just 11.9% for second place. That seems too high to me.

Traffic by Google ranking

Next up we have a study by Neil Walker showing 46.37% for first and 29.43% for second – this is based on Webmaster Tools data across 2700 keywords.

SEO Google ranking click data

Finally we have the Chitika study which shows that first place gets 34.35% compared to 16.96% in second.

CTR Data by ranking

CTR data by ranking

There are no real conclusions to be drawn from this, other than first place always gets the lions share of visitors. I would like to see a study purely on non-brand keywords and also some kind of study on keywords with AdWords and keywords without AdWords to see what affect that has on CTR across the results.

Our main observation from client data is that first normally gets about twice the traffic as second which is a pretty big jump.

BY Patrick Altoft AT 6:48pm ON Thursday, 27 May 2010

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3 and has worked in the SEO industry for over 10 years. With experience across some of the worlds largest brands as well as startup businesses Patrick is well known in the industry and speaks regularly at the major SEO conferences and events. Follow Patrick on Twitter or Google+

Comments

  • http://www.twitter.com/gregpower Greg Power

    Universal search has to be taken into consideration too imo. I personally think the CTR given for 1st is higher than it actually would be…

  • http://www.granite.ie/ Robert Carpenter

    Great stuff Patrick,

    I’d like to bring your idea one step further and see a report where they include map listings along with organic and AdWords listings.
    Then we would have some serious data and my proposals would look a whole lot better:)

    Rob

  • http://www.seomad.com Neil Walker

    Hi Patrick, nice to meet you at Internet World, thanks for the reference, the Chitika study is also interesting, i’ll give you an update next week, because the CTR data I created I’m just going through labeling the query as either:

    1) Brand
    2) Product Specific
    3) location based

  • http://www.page1results.co.uk seo packages

    Great analysis there. I would be very interested to see how CTRs change across niches. Google’s moto is to get people of it’s search engine as quickly as possible.

  • http://www.interactionmedia.co.uk/ Serge Pon

    Thank you Patrick, for useful information.
    Will be interesting to look in those 2700 Keywords

  • http://intensedebate.com/profiles/patrickaltoft Patrick Altoft

    Thanks

  • http://signup-form.simplycast.com/ Michael

    The outcome is not a surprise, first will always get a bulk of the clicks but I would also like more variables thrown in as already mentioned. The AOL numbers seem a little to low for 2nd place.

  • http://www.seocompanylimited.com Alex

    Patrick. I strongly agree with this report and nice to see recent useful information.

  • http://thebloggingacademy.com Stephen

    It's interesting to see these figures, but the results are not really that surprising. One site I have consistently ranks at #2 for a fun keyword phrase. #1 is a popular brand with a strong network behind it. The CTR for my site is 9%.

    Other sites I have that rank at #2 have a CTR of about 16%.

  • http://www.specialprayer.webs.com/articles.htm Heinrich

    Thank you for the analysis. When looking at SEO strategy this info adds a lot of value. In the end the #1 position is still the place to aim for.

  • http://www.scanalarm.com/ Carl Eisenstein

    I would also love to see how this varies with Google’s universal search results. If you have videos or images at third position, or a “did you mean?” result, how does that affect first position click through.

    There are just so many variables to consider in a study like this.

  • http://traffic-jockey.com Jamie Barclay

    Thanks Patrick for this useful information. I hope to see some changes on those figures in the future.

  • http://www.livedealer.org livedealer

    Google now gives this information to us with their search queries tool in Webmaster Tools.
    I'd be interested to get thoughts on just how accurate this new feature is though.

  • http://www.seowizzards.co.uk/ Kenneth

    Google Search Queries Tool is great to use if you have an interest in this sort of data the information provided is great.

  • http://www.BestExtraIncomeIdeas.com John

    I wonder if what % of the estimated total search count for a particular key phrase receives clicks. In other words if a phrase is supposed to get 100,000 people landing on that google page to 90%, 80% or maybe 10% of those people actually click one of the ten organic results. Thanks

  • http://www.artisanmanagement.com Chris

    It would certainly be interesting to see what happens when you have both a natural listing at #1 and a PPC ad in the top 3 positions. For one of our clients the main bulk of their traffic (>80%) still comes from the PPC ad in this scenario. We are due to experiment with turning the PPC ad off to see what impact this may have on overall traffic.

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  • http://www.arnoldk.com Arnold

    Nice work Patrick. I’ve seen quite a few studies around this for now and as you do I would really like to see a more detailed study, breaking down keyword types by brand / product name and non-brand / generic keywords, and even better a breakdown by industry.

  • http://www.seomad.com Neil Walker

    Arnold you can find CTR data by brand, location type searches here: http://www.seomad.com/SEOBlog/google-seo-organic-ctr-segmented-by-brand-product-and-location.html hope you find it useful.

  • http://dougneubauer.com Doug N

    Hello Patrick. You mentioned interest in a study on non-brand keywords. I did a study somewhat like that, revisiting the AOL data and breaking it out into search categories: navigational, goods and services, comparison shoppers, and so on.

    The goods and services category matched pretty closely to the Chitika study:
    #1 33%, #2 14%, #3 12%, #4 8%, #5 6%, #6 6%, #7 4%, #8 4%, #9 4%, #10 4%

    The comparison shoppers had a bit more gradual drop-off in click-throughs:
    #1 22%, #2 15%, #3 12%, #4 9%, #5 8%, #6 7%, #7 5%, #8 5%, #9 5%, #10 5%

    Reference: http://dougneubauer.com/2010/10/click-through-rates-and-search-classification/

  • http://www.swomconnect.com warren

    It shows why most web masters aim for the top 1 in the google search engine rankings. You will have more visitors if you have higher rankings. Thanks for the post.

  • http://philadelphiaseo.org/ Philadelphia SEO

    You’ve got a real deal of chart analysis here and it’s pretty helpful for many SEO out there worldwide, good job!

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