Even though you probably wouldn’t challenge the statement that search engine ranking has big impact on how much traffic websites receive, you might not know just how significant the connection is between search engine ranking and what “causes” search referral traffic to a website: click through rate.
AOL’s Controversial Data Release on Search Engine Ranking and Click Distribution
While search engines are fiercely protective of much of the data that are available to them – including anything that shows any connection between search engine ranking and click “distribution” (clicks on search engine results by their ranking) – there was one notable exception back in 2006 when the research arm of AOL released search log data on about 650,000 subscribers who carried out nearly 20 million search queries over the course of a three month period (it’s worth noting that AOL’s search engine was then – and is still now – powered by Google).
The data in the table to the right shows percentage of click distribution by search engine ranking for the first five pages of search results (click the image to enlarge).
AOL SERP Clickthrough Rates
As you can see, the top search engine ranking received 42.30% of the click distribution, while the second and third search engine rankings followed with 11.92% and 8.44%, respectively.
The top three search engine rankings combined for more than 60% of the total click distribution, while the top five search engine rankings – combined – received more than 70% of the total click through distribution.
All search engine results ranking on the first page – combined – received nearly 90% of the total click distribution, leaving about 4.5% for the second page and a little less than 6% for all of the remaining tens of thousands or millions of web pages vying for the same keyword.
Cornell University’s Eye-Tracking Analysis
Researchers at Cornell University have also made their contribution to the body of evidence on the search engine ranking-click distribution connection.
They employed eye-tracking analysis to explore the both click and attention distribution. While we won’t go into the science of eye-tracking or the mechanics of the study, suffice to say that search engine results ranking on the first page receive about 87.5% of the total click distribution – with the first result receiving more than 56% of the click distribution (image source: SEO Searcher).
Cornell_click distribution SERP
The researchers at Cornell also developed some interesting theory about why the top search results received such a grossly disproportionate share of the click distribution. Check out the Power of Defaults to read more.
The Bottom Line on Search Engine Ranking
No matter what source of data you rely upon – AOL, Cornell University, or even your own gut feel – the bottom line is that top search engine rankings outperform all other search engine rankings combined – by a wide, wide margin.
And when you consider that the average monthly search volume for thousands of keywords and phrases is in the millions, the impact of a top search engine ranking can be staggering.
Make sure that you don’t leave your search engine rankings to chance. Give your website a boost by committing to a backlink-building effort.
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