Search Engines ... what do people click in the search results?

A new study about the click behaviour of web searchers was released in April. The study shows that searchers click specialised content within general search results more than they do within the results of specialised searches.

Blended results and specialised searches

Within the last year, all major search engines have begun returning blended results for some searches. For these searches, specialised 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 specialised 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.

1.      If your website has been online for one year or more and cannot be found in the top 10 results for your specific keywords, then we should take a look at ways to improve your website’s ranking.

2.      In addition to getting top 10 rankings, it is also important that your website attracts visitors.  If your website is not getting sufficient visitors, then talk to us about how to improve your visitor numbers.  (Remember, if you are not receiving monthly stats for your website, then you have no way of keeping track of visitor numbers).

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SOME EXTRA STATISTICAL INFORMATION:
Below are the top 20 search words and phrases that our visitors are typing into the search engines to find www.tearoha-info.co.nz (there were 138 in total used during August and encouraging to see many of the top search strings are directly related to our advertisers, but not good for those businesses are "missing out"):

Top 20 of 138 Total Search Strings
#	Hits		Search String
1	56	19.72%	te aroha
2	19	6.69%	harcourts te aroha
3	15	5.28%	te aroha nz
4	13	4.58%	tree swing
5	5	1.76%	te aroha map
6	5	1.76%	te aroha new zealand
7	4	1.41%	te aroha accommodation
8	4	1.41%	te aroha holiday park
9	4	1.41%	tearoha information centre
10	3	1.06%	aroha mountain lodge
11	3	1.06%	harcourts nz te aroha
12	3	1.06%	mt te aroha
13	3	1.06%	te aroha hospital
14	3	1.06%	te aroha real estate
15	2	0.70%	accommodation at te aroha
16	2	0.70%	aroha
17	2	0.70%	harcourts real estate
18	2	0.70%	health te aroha
19	2	0.70%	homestay mountain view
20	2	0.70%	hospital elderly