It’s the Click not the Query

There is a lot of work focused on the query in Web searching. Certainly understandable for a lot of reasons.

However, the key element for the content providers and the search engine is the click? What do the users do AFTER the query? This is where the money is.

We know that about 40% of the time, users don’t click on ANY link on the search engine result page (SERP). This is reasonable from my own experiences, as many times I am looking for something that is answered on the SERP (e.g., the page numbers of an article, an authors name, the model of a product). ... Although, it would be great for the search engines if someone could find a way to dollarize these no-click searches.

I did some research examining how folks viewed SERP and the associated links off those pages. About 60% to 70% of users will never go beyond the first SERP. So, your Webpage has got to be there to have the best chance of being seen.

What about number of actual links clicked? Approximately 70% of users will only view 1 or 2 Webpages per query. So, competition is tight for the all important click. Over an entire session (i.e., a set of queries by a user), about half of the searchers will view no more than 3 pages.

I also looked at how long a user spends on the pages they viewed – about 14% of the users viewed a page for less than 30 seconds. So, you have to make that all important first impression.

Read the complete chapter on page viewing patterns of Web searchers