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Study: what do people click in search results?
A new study about the click behavior of web searchers has
been released this
month. The study shows that searchers click specialized content
within general search results more than they do within the
results of specialized searches.
Blended results and specialized searches
Within the last year, all major search engines have begun
returning blended results for some searches. For these searches,
specialized search result types such as news, images and
videos appear along the regular web pages on the search result
page.
Before search engines introduced blended results, these
result types were only available by performing specialized
searches in the news, image or video sections of the search
engines.
Which results are clicked by web searchers?
The study shows which results are clicked most often:
- 36% of searchers click news results within blended
search results, while only 17% click a news result
after conducting a news-specific search.
- 31% of search engine users click image results
within blended search results, while 26% click an image result
after conducting an image-specific search.
- 17% of search engine users click video results
within blended search results, while only 10% click a video result
after conducting a video-specific search.
- Images are the most clicked result type after a specialized
search.
- News items are the most clicked result type within blended
search results.
The first result page is getting more important
The study also revealed some trends that show that the first
page of the search results is getting more important:
- 68% of search engine users click results on the first
page of search results, compared to 62% in 2006, and 60%
in 2004.
- Only 8% of search engine users review more than the first
three pages prior to clicking on a result.
- 49% of search engine users who continue their search
when not finding what they are looking for, change and/or
re-launch their search after reviewing just the first page
of search results, up from 40% in 2006, and 42% in 2004.
- 37% of online users associate appearance at the top of
search results with a company's leadership within its industry
or category, up slightly from 35% in 2006 and 33% in 2002.
What does this mean for your website rankings?
The study clearly shows that it is very important to be
listed on the first page of the search results.
- If your website cannot be found in the top 10 results
for your keywords, then you should optimize your web pages right
now.
- In addition to getting top 10 rankings, it is also important
that your web pages attract clicks. Write compelling web
page titles. The more attractive the headline of your web
page in the search results, the more people will click.
Your
website must be found in the top 10 results and it
must also be attractive enough so that people click on
it. If your website is not listed on the first result page
then you'll lose a lot of potential customers.
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