Search Engine Statistics - Position Clicks

Via Threadwatch, Jacob Nielsen analyzes a recent SERP study and provides his own insights.

First, the study:

Professor Thorsten Joachims and colleagues at Cornell University conducted a study of search engines. Among other things, their study examined the links users followed on the SERP (search engine results page). They found that 42% of users clicked the top search hit, and 8% of users clicked the second hit. So far, no news. Many previous studies, including my own, have shown that the top few entries in search listings get the preponderance of clicks and that the number one hit gets vastly more clicks than anything else.

What is interesting is the researchers’ second test, wherein they secretly fed the search results through a script before displaying them to users. This script swapped the order of the top two search hits. In other words, what was originally the number two entry in the search engine’s prioritization ended up on top, and the top entry was relegated to second place.

In this swapped condition, users still clicked on the top entry 34% of the time and on the second hit 12% of the time.

Here are the two explanations as to why:

• Search engines are so good at judging relevancy that they almost always place the best hit on top.
• Users click the top hit not because it’s any better, but simply because it’s first. This might be due to sheer laziness (after all, you start from the top) or because users assume the search engine places the best hit on top, whether that’s actually true or not.

Jacob concludes:

Given how often the search engine was wrong, users clicked the top hit far too frequently. And when the two top hits were swapped, too few users changed their behavior. In other words, we can conclude that there is a strong bias in favor of clicking the top link, though not so strong that link quality is irrelevant.

The actionable consequences for search engine marketing are not particularly surprising: It’s extremely important to be listed first, to the extent that you can achieve this. But it’s also important to have good microcontent to increase the likelihood that users will perceive your site as relevant to their needs. Good page titles and article summaries are a must.

I agree. Two conclusions I feel can be drawn from this is that (1) users trust the search engines, but (2) also throw in a bit of discretion, which would explain why swapping the results didn’t swap the percentages or see them remain the same. It is important to note that position is clearly favored here, so a higher rank seems to be nine times out of 10 better than a more relevant result. As for what users do when they reach your site, that’s obviously another matter.