Back in August 2006, AOL released data on some 35 million search queries and 20 million “clickthroughs.” One thing they showed was just how important it is to be in the top spot in any Google search. (See here for background on the release, and here for AOL’s apology.)
A breakdown of the popularity of sites that come up in a search reveals a steep downward curve from number 1 onward (see chart here).
The top Web site received 42 percent of all clickthroughs.
Number 2 dropped to 12 percent.
Number 3 dropped to 8.4 percent.
By number 10, we’re at 3 percent.
And for the entire second page of search results we’re at 10 percent.
What this means is that the vast majority of Google searches are satisfied with the the first four or five entries that come up.
It also means that for anyone and any business building a Web site, one factor stands out above all. How do you get to the top spot in a Google search? If you’re not in the top 10, you might as well not exist.
12 Responses to The Power of the Top Spot
_perplexed_ - November 3, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Before concluding anything, some means of breaking numbers like these down by search specificity is required. Someone who searches for “University” and someone who searches for “Harvard University” are likely looking for different things and want the different results they get. I note that “Emory” didn’t make my top ten “University” results so I disagree with your final statement: There is reason for Emory to exist…
goxewu - November 3, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Since the preponderance of Google searches are (OK, probably are) for the likes of porn, OTC Viagra from Canada, discount handbags and the latest news about Jon & Kate, might it not be a net BENEFIT to society that people are actually wasting less time on the pursuit of junk than they would if the persued their quests through forty or fifty listings?Also, since Prof. Bauerlein does have an ongoing “The Dumbest Generation” agenda about the Internet, we can reasonably assume that this post is supposed to make a point. My guess is, “Oh, the lack of thoroughness that the Internet encourages!” But has he ever noticed that lots of businesses call themselves “AAAA Locksmiths” or “A-1 Livery Service” or “AAAAA Pharmacy” just so they come up first in the phone book and get the customers who don’t want to read any further?
sherbygirl - November 3, 2009 at 6:43 pm
The major issue for me as an educator is that students treat ALL searches as they would for gossip or yellow pages entry. If you are looking for scores, an adress, movie listings, you can safely rely on the top hit. It’s this attitude that leads students to make the sane assumptionwheb doing research for a paper; they assume the first entry is the best one and there isn’t anything worth readin past the first page of results. We drill it into our students that google isn’t research for university essays, but once they get frustrated with the university’s database systems, they revert back to google. Could you imagine if these students had to use physical indexes or card catalogues? I don’t go so far as to question the over-all intelligence, but I have to agree that students lack patience, especially when doing research. The google stats should inform us as educators so we can assist students when explaining assignments. Most students don’t understand how google works, why it is a powerful and effective search engine, but inappropriate for their work.But, then again, if the knee-jerk reaction of the people reading this post is to a) dismiss due to the source and b) critique because the answer wasn’t explicitly outlined, I worry as much, if not more for the professoriate.
sherbygirl - November 3, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Sorry for the spelling; I’m on my soul-destoying iPhone!
goxewu - November 4, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Not quite sure what sherbygirl is referring to with “the knee-jerk reaction of the people reading this post,” but she might want to consider again that Prof. Bauerlein’s post on AOL’s stats had nothing in particular to do with academic searches, such as those by students doing research. Since we don’t know whether those searches constitute 20 percent, 5 percent, or .000001 percent of the 35 million searches and 20 million click-throughs cited by AOL, commeters saying, “Aw, pshaw” to Prof. Bauerlein’s implied relevance of the stats to academic matters (otherwise, why does he cite them?) is justified.
suzannewayne - November 5, 2009 at 6:09 am
As a web site manager who has search engine optimization (SEO) as part of my web strategy, I just want to point out that SEO gets even more complicated than “we want the top spot.” You should optimize for multiple search terms. For example, we have the no. 1 spot for “College of Education.” That great result (as far as I can tell) is for three reasons:1. because our site is built with web standards html, so it is easily crawled by search engines2. the site has that particular phrase littered throughout the site, in titles, headers, and body content (because we are a “College of Education”as opposed to a School of Education)3. we have a number of professional research relationships and a number of other “respected sites” link back to our site (Google determines what “respected sites” might be)The self-congratulations ends, however, when I consider how many prospective students might search by “College of Education” What about people searching for “School of Education” or “Degree in Education?”Or as is even more likely, they search for their specific interest, such as “Educational Leadership” or “Degree in Educational Policy”So I need to optimize for a number of search terms for the college home page, and then do the same for the sub sites that represent different programs and departments in my site. (whew – I am getting tired just thinking about it.)On a side note:People wanting to develop keywords for their sites might be interested in these keyword tools offered by Google: http://www.google.com/sktool/#https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
mbelvadi - November 5, 2009 at 7:08 am
To me, that data just confirms my own experience that Google’s relevancy algorithms are incredibly effective. If none of the top 5 links appears to be what I want, I don’t often look farther down, but instead change my search. I rarely go past the first page (which I have set to 50, not 10) because I can tell by eyeball that they aren’t relevant that far down, and I trust that if the hits in the 20s are getting less relevant, it’s only getting worse to keep going down. And as goxewu seems to suggest, these raw numbers don’t really mean anything useful to a web manager without a breakdown by kinds of searches. If the overwhelming number of searches are about celebrity gossip (as almost any glance any time at Google’s zeitgeist will show), I’m not too worried that a big percent of overall clicks are on the first couple of results. So for a school of education, where a search for those terms may well yield results well below 50 that are still prima facia relevant, the question to be researched is how far down will a searcher look when the results are still looking relevant all the way down?
markbauerlein - November 5, 2009 at 9:29 am
Precisely, mbelvadi, it does show Google’s incredible “relevancy” capacity. That indicates, however, that what Google does is provide precisely what people are looking for. As sherbygirl suggests, however, that casts the search engine as a retrieval tool, not a research tool. That’s where the complications of search engines as educational elements come into play.
blendedlibrarian - November 5, 2009 at 10:01 am
Mark – would your thoughts about google also apply to google scholar – as far as it not being a research tool. A student might actually get something of value there, but I find it is often more about what you are missing than what you are retrieving. And with Google Scholar it’s not clear what isn’t being search – not to mention that the relevancy rankings can give you fairly outdated results in the top 10 while a fairly current research article may be no where to be found – or not yet ranked enough to be retrieved on the first page. I disagree with those who believe nothing of value will be found beyond the first page. That’s just not the case. As a librarian I think the real problem isn’t Google’s retrieval algorithm or its relevance display (as opposed to how a keyword search system displays – LIFO) – but it’s the search interface itself. For any simplistic search such as “emory university” it works fine, but for a more complex student research query (e.g., how are 20th century icons treated by the media in ameria and europe and how do the two differ) google is just not well equipped to handle that although you will probably do a bit better in Scholar rather than regular google. And if sherbygirl finds her students getting frustrated with the library databases – many are not much more complex than google once you understand the difference between how the two work – she should spend more time in class helping students to deal with their inability to subject themselves to a bit of search frustration – and developing the skill to work through it. Students expect their first search to yield perfect results. The concept of review and revise is nearly a forgetten skill. Faculty could help students to better understand that search is a process – not instant retrieval.
willynilly - November 5, 2009 at 10:45 am
I am very pleased to observe that The Chronicle has shifted Mr. Bauerlein’s assignments from researching data and information that he always misinterprets to researching and reporting totally useless data and information. Finally, after a number of clumsy efforts, the Chronicle has found Mr. Bauerlein’s true comfort niche.
markbauerlein - November 5, 2009 at 11:34 am
Good points, blendedlibrarian, and as I am giving a speech to Google people this afternoon, I’m going to raise your “google scholar” questions with them.
philosophy - November 5, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I strongly second mbelvadi’s comments, and add that whether I’m looking for something specific that I suspect is out there somewhere, or whether I’m looking for a variety of viewpoints on some issue makes quite a difference in how far down my page (of 50) I look. If the former, not far before I change my search terms; if the latter, I look farther down the page.