First on Google
First on Google? Why this headline doesn’t sound something like to be first on Yahoo, Bing or maybe even better; first on search engines? Reason is simple. Google is number one, most popular and most advanced search enigne in the world. If your site isn’t indexed on Google, or if you’re not in top 10, you lose many visitors.
Nowadays is common to say or even to hear that you need to be in the first page of Google results if you want to receive clicks. That means to be at the very top 10. That’s right, but to get even more visitors you need to be first. Why?
Because, if your site is on searched keyword on 9. or even 10. position you could end up with getting only 1% of all overall clicks. How to grab 99%? That’s impossible, but you can get more than 50% if you’re first on Google.
The most popular study about this topics comes from the Cornell University. They used an eye tracking technology to discover what percentage of users would click on each of the 10 results that appear on the first page on Google.
All results you can find are in table bellow and if you look at them you will understand why it is so important to be first on google.
On other study by Yahoo they are given different but almost similiar results. Please check both pictures below. You will notice that is very important to be first.
We can easily explain these percentages if we use numbers. Let’s say that you manage to rank in the first page of Google for a keyword or keywords that receives 1.000 searches per day. You could end up with receiving only 27 clicks daily if you’re on the ninth position. If you’re second you will receive big 115 visitors per day via Google. But even this number isn’t so big if you compare it with to be first on Google and get impressive 424 visitors.
We don’t have any other details or any other scientific proof to confirm numbers and percentage from table. Google for sure can gave us more detailed info, but we think they don’t have any interest to reveal them.
Anyway, conclusion is simple. If your goal is to get plenty of clicks from Google (or any other serach engine) you must be on first page of results. But if your appetite is even bigger and you wan’t to get most of your target keywords, for sure you must be first on Google.