SEO – Some Research Results and Statistics
Below, you’ll find some SEO research results and insights. We invite you to draw your own conclusions, though some of them might be pretty obvious in any case.
Further corroborating the general consensus about search behavior, a November 2005 discussion on www.webmasterworld.com quotes the following statistics:
16 % of Internet users only look at the first few search results
32 % will read through to the bottom of the first page - but not beyond.
Only 23 % of Internet searchers go beyond the second page ; that number drops even further for third-page searches.
Only 10.3 % of web users will actually read through the first three results pages.
Just 8.7 % tend to open more than three pages.
And Web Marketing and SEO expert Mike Moran (www.mikemoran.com) quotes extensive research to the effect that in average, searchers spend no more than 7 (!) seconds looking at a search result page. It goes without saying that during those 7 seconds only very high-ranking results will be given more than a fleeting glance. Powwwerpages' own research indicates that users spend closer to 13 - 16 seconds per page, but even that isn't a lot of time ! Either way, the above suggests that the average web searcher will scan the results, form his opinion very quickly, and then click on the links he likes without bothering to look further.
All this tells us: it’s hard to get a second chance.
The good news is that one can dramatically improve a web site ranking with smart, effective SEO. It’s never too late, and it can be done any time.
Further research highlights: only about 60 % of Internet searchers scroll below "the fold" (the part of the page that is below the bottom of the screen when first shown), according to Greg Edwards, the CTO of Eyetools (www.eyetools.com).
Users returning to a search, Greg said, do tend to look further down the search results page for more results, but even then the "above the fold results" will still get looked at (and clicked) with significantly higher frequency.
Other research arrives at even more sobering results by claiming that not only do many web searchers look just at the first search results page, but often consider only the top few listings on it. We don't think this is very likely, although it would support Mike Moran's 7 % hypothesis above. If true, this would suggest that even a Page 1, Number 7 or 8 ranking may not always be good enough - certainly food for thought, and perhaps reason for even more crowding on Page 1.
True, Jarvis Mak, at Nielsen/NetRatings (www.nielsen-netratings.com), notes that as users perform more and more searches within a session, they are more likely to look at a second page of search results, perhaps even a third page (the reason probably being that - not having immediately found satisfactory search results - they will give deeper and more extensive searches a chance). But that's as far as they'll usually go.
So it seems to us that the buck stops on page 3 – literally.
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