How Much of Your Website Do Users Read?

"On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely." - Jakob Nielsen (UseIt.com, 2008.)

References

Jakob Nielson. UseIt.Com. May 6, 2008. "How Little Do Users Read?"

What is the Percentage of Search Queries by Category?

The below table is a breakdown based on 9,038,794 searches and 4,926,623 clicks on AOL search (SeoBook.com, 2008).

Category	Percentage Breakdown
Misc	15.69%
Entertainment	12.60%
Shopping	10.21%
Porn	7.19%
URL	6.78%
Research	6.77%
Misspellings	6.53%
Places	6.13%
Business	6.07%
Health	5.99%
News & Society	5.85%
Computing	5.38%
Orgs & Inst	4.46%
Home & Garden	3.82%
Autos	3.46%
Sports	3.30%
Travel	3.09%
Games	2.38%
Personal Fin	1.63%
Holidays	1.63%

References

SeoBook.com. 2008. "How Much is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business?"

What is the Percentage of Search Queries by Category?

What Percentage of Searchers are Shopping Versus Looking for Information?

The data in the below table is from research done by Bernard Jansen of Penn State. Informational queries are those which are focused on gathering information with no predetermined intent to purchase. Shopping queries are those that do reflect an intent to execute a transaction once the desired information has been found.

Search Type	Percentage Breakdown
Informational	80%
Shopping	10%
Other	10%

References

Penn State. 2008. "Determining the Informational, Navigational, and Transactional Intent of Web Queries"

How Many Purchases Originate from Organic Search versus Paid Search Ads?

At the NYC SES conference JupiterMedia stated that 5 out of 6 commercial purchases which originate from search originate from the free (or organic) side (SeoBook.com. 2008).

References

SeoBook. 2008. "Pay Per Click Clickthrough Rate SEO Stats"

What is the Click Through Rate By Ad Position?

Services like Google AdWords allow you to bid more to move your ad up in position. However, what is the improvement in ad performance by moving up to a higher position? To be able to reliably make this determination accurate statistics are needed. The below data was provided by Atlas DMT (SeoBook.com. 2008).

Google AdWords Ad Performance by Ad Position

Ad Position	Relative Click Through Rate (CTR)	Relative Impressions	Click Potential
1 (First)	100%	100%	100%
2 (Second)	77.4%	77.2%	59.8%
3 (Third)	66.6%	71.3%	47.5%
4 (Fourth)	57.4%	67.9%	39.0%
5 (Fifth)	52.9%	65.8%	34.8%
6 (Sixth)	50.2%	62.3%	31.3%
7 (Seventh)	39.7%	60.6%	24.0%
8 (Eigth)	34.3%	58.3%	20.0%
9 (Ninth)	26.0%	58.6%	15.3%
10 (Tenth)	26.3%	52.6%	13.9%

Overture Ad Performance by Ad Position

Ad Position	Relative Click Through Rate (CTR)	Relative Impressions	Click Potential
1 (First)	100%	100%	100%
2 (Second)	80.0%	97.2%	77.7%
3 (Third)	52.2%	94.5%	58.8%
4 (Fourth)	45.9%	91.2%	41.8%
5 (Fifth)	35.0%	86.2%	30.2%
6 (Sixth)	32.3%	74.3%	24.0%
7 (Seventh)	26.6%	67.7%	18.0%
8 (Eigth)	23.6%	59.5%	14.1%
9 (Ninth)	21.0%	42.9%	9.0%
10 (Tenth)	21.1%	36.8%	7.8%

References

SeoBook. 2008. "How Much is a Top Google Ranking Worth Your Business?"

What is the Click Through Rate of Each Position in Search Results?

Have you ever wondered how many clicks the first search results gets versus the second, third, fourth, etc? The below table is a breakdown based on 9,038,794 searches and 4,926,623 clicks on AOL search (SeoBook.com, 2008). As of this statistic, all major search engine results pages, including Google's, look and act roughly the same. Thus, these statistics should apply to any search engine.

Result Position	Percent of Clicks	Relative to 1st Position
1 (First)	42.13%	n/a
2 (Second)	11.90%	3.5x less
3 (Third)	8.50%	4.9x less
4 (Fourth)	6.06%	6.9x less
5 (Fifth)	4.92%	8.5x less
6 (Sixth)	4.05%	10.4x less
7 (Seventh)	3.41%	12.3x less
8 (Eigth)	3.01%	14.0x less
9 (Ninth)	2.85%	14.8x less
10 (Tenth)	2.99%	14.1x less
Total	89.82%

References

SeoBook.com. 2008. "How Much is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business?"