Sphinn - What 36,389,567 Searches Can Tell You About Google

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What 36,389,567 Searches Can Tell You About Google

Went Hot: August 7, 2008 - 2:57 am
Posted By: TCSM 333 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchlightdigital.com)
Category: Google SEO

The ultimate guide to where people click. This data is the result of 36,389,567 searches and 19,434,540 clicks. The results make for interesting reading...

27 Comments

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Comments

from NickWilsdon 333 days ago #

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Good analysis, best post I've read today on here.

"The top four results put together account for over two thirds of all clicks that will happen (68.69% in total)."

That shows the effect of Google pushing up these authority sites into top positions. Eventually they will just leave scraps for everyone else.

from evilgreenmonkey 333 days ago #

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@TCSM Has someone from Ayima been telling you secrets? ;)

from TCSM 333 days ago #

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@evilgreenmonkey Nooooo...

Actually, it's from a whacking great file I got from AOL. I'm guessing you're going to the bbq on the 13th?

from evilgreenmonkey 333 days ago #

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Yarp, I'm the one organising it ;o)

from TCSM 333 days ago #

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Good man. I shall see you there!

from philippe 332 days ago #

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Very good post indeed! This is very good information here. Agree with Nick, this is the best thing I've read so far today.

from Mindy 332 days ago #

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That's interesting information but how does the AOL demographic affect the data? Am I wrong to assume that the average user of AOL search is less internet-savvy than most?

from TCSM 332 days ago #

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@philippe glad you enjoyed it!
@mindy it's almost certainly skewed sightly, and as it says in the article, mileage will vary from SERP to SERP.

from 140Local 332 days ago #

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How did you get this information from AOL and how can you compare AOL data to what would be true for Google. Because have you been to AOL lately they try to hide the fact that you are likely to be clicking on PPC links. That 42% who don't click on anything I have a feeling would be a lot lower in google, because google clearly shows you what is PPC and what is organic. Most of that 42% who don't click anything in your data is likely made up of PPC clicks since it is so easy to click on a PPC link in AOL.

That fact alone causes a huge issue with this data. I think it tells me hardly anything about google, except they are liekly to have a higher percentage of people clicking on organic links, and that is just a quess.

from TCSM 332 days ago #

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@140local the data is from AOL log files. They're fairly available, if you know where to go.
And no, the 42% is nothing to do with PPC. As stated in the article, this data excludes PPC clicks. Not because people click on things and they're wrong, and that's the 42% or whatever. It's just completely PPC free.

And even if that was the case, it still gives you data on 19.4 million click throughs from SERPs. If you can't find something useful from that...

from 140Local 332 days ago #

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Tell me where to go to get this data. I want a link.

Also, You proved my point. When you factor out PPC you take away a huge percentage of people who likely clicked on something. So you can't say that, because 42% of people didn't click anything in the data you had, then that means that 42% of people who perform a search don't click anything.

The people could have clicked something on that page, and it is likely to be a PPC ad which again isn't in the data. You can say, that according to this AOL data that 42% of people didn't click an Organic search result. That is a good conclusion. The question then is what did those 42% of people click: a back button, did they type in another search, the images or video link, a ppc ad, what. There is more stuff on that page besides clicking a organic serp.

from 140Local 332 days ago #

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I am also interested in how you have this data formated. To even say that you have 42% of people didn't click on anything, doesn't make since according to what you are showing. If I add up the first ten results because that is typically what is on the first page of results I get that 89.29 of people clicked on atleast one of those links. Or does that data you are showing only include percent of people who clicked on that link according to the number of people who clicked on a link and not the total number of people who clicked on a search.

from TCSM 332 days ago #

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http://www.gregsadetsky.com/aol-data/ Oh, and I hope you're not on a metered connection...

And yes, there's no PPC data in this. If there was, it'd make the whole thing less useful, as it'd obfuscate the data. And yes, it does mean 42% of people don't click anything. Why's that surprising?

Once again, the 42% isn't people that clicked PPC. They either performed another search, or hit back, or went somewhere else.

from TCSM 332 days ago #

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The data shown (percentages) only relates to peopel who clicked on something. So it's the 58% left over. Sorry for the confusion.

from 140Local 332 days ago #

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I looked at the log files. These are the following fields that show in this data:

What Appears to be a unique user ID
What the Query was
Time the Query was done
Ranking for the item clicked on
What the user clicked on if they clicked on anything
Closed their browser
Anything else I am not thinking of

From that it is easy to tell that 42% of people didn't click on an organic result. But, that 42% of the people who didn't click on anything performed on of the following actions:

Clicked on a PPC link
Hit their back button
Typed in a URL or hit a book mark
Performed another search
Click on one of the many other links on that search engines page

From that you can say that:

42% of people didn't click an organic link
They likely performed one of the following actions
A portion of the 42% who didn't click an organic link clicked a PPC link

What you cannot infer from this data:

That 42% of people did not click on anything and just hit their back button or performed another search. A portion of these people performed this following action, but not everyone.

TCSM: Thanks for the info, sorry I am giving you a hard time. I just want to understand this better.

from earlpearl 332 days ago #

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This week I was looking at some data from a tool that stored the AOL dump. I've always felt that was the greatest source of data we have had on the web. It is the closest thing we'll see to what the SE's see and know.

The report is invaluable.

Thanks for ultimately revealing where the data set comes from. Its absolutely great information.

Dave

from TCSM 332 days ago #

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No worries. To qualify further, I suspect that there's no PPC data, based on what I know of click-throughs on PPC links based on several years of running campaigns. It just doesn't fit, to my eye.

And the UID is obfuscated IP address.

from 140Local 332 days ago #

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I know there is no PPC data. AOL says it themselves. But, just because there is no PPC data does not mean that they eliminated anyone from these results that did click on a PPC ad.

Listen to me, I am not saying that 42% of people clicked on a PPC link. I am saying a portion of that 42% clicked on a PPC link. I agree overall PPC CTR is not 42%. Read above, I outlined what is likely made up of those 42% who did not click on a search result.

Read this: http://www.gregsadetsky.com/aol-data/U500k_README.txt

AOL is only showing data for people who clicked organic results - like you said and AOL says. I feel like I am going around and around with you.

And it is not hard for me to believe that 42% of people didn't click on an organic result. Please understand what I am saying.

If you want my theory, people who are actually using Google itself, would likely have a higher percentage of people who clicked on Organic results. This is because more people are less likely to click on a PPC ad as they are clearly defined in Google unlike AOL. Also the top PPC results on Google take up less room than they do on AOL.

from TCSM 332 days ago #

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Ahhh, I get you. :) Sorry for the misunderstanding.

from Jaafar 331 days ago #

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The same analysis was done about two years ago ;) in a french seo site http://www.webrankinfo.com/actualites/200608-repartition-des-clics.htm
using help from here http://www.webrankinfo.com/forums/viewtopic_57017.htm#547990

The difference for position #1 may be explained by the fact that the author exluded:
1) Multiple clicks for the same url by the same user
2) Searches for domain names (don't forget it is aol users :)

He ended up with 15,436,869 clicks
1   35,78%
2   12,25%
3   9,16%
4   6,70%
5   5,47%
6   4,51%
7   3,84%
8   3,40%
10   3,40%
9   3,23%
11   0,78%
12   0,66%
13   0,62%
14   0,58%
15   0,56%
16   0,46%
17   0,43%
18   0,40%
25   0,40%
19   0,38%

Here is the code he used for these results

cat all_aol_data.tsv | awk -F "t" '{ if($4) print($1 "t" $2 "t t" $4 "t" $5); }' | uniq | awk -F "t" '{ print($2 "t" $4); }' | egrep -v '(.org|.net|.com|www.)' | awk -F "t" '{ if($2) print($2); }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | awk '{ gsub("^ *",""); gsub(" ",","); print; }'

from Jaafar 331 days ago #

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Just wanted to add that the guy also published how many words were used by users for searches http://www.webrankinfo.com/forums/topic_page_57017_15.htm#548024

2 words: 29,03%
1 word: 27,49%
3 words: 18,68%
4 words: 11,13%
5 words: 6,20%
6 words: 3,32%
7 words: 1,74%
8 words: 0,97%
9 words: 0,56%
10 words: 0,32%

from TCSM 331 days ago #

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It's been reported on a lot. The data isn't particularly new. However, as stated in the post, it's more a response to a YOUmoz post, to refresh people's memories.

from iBrian 331 days ago #

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Is this the same AOL data from 2 years ago?

If so, Donna's paste from earnersforum 2 years ago makes for a useful reference:
http://www.seo-scoop.com/2006/08/09/aol-data-reveals-how-top-10-position-affects-ctr/

from TCSM 331 days ago #

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It is indeed.

from earlpearl 330 days ago #

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Just a little correction on the article. The organic ctr was 53.4% of total clicks, not 58%. The author made a math mistake.

So of the remainder visitors didn't click on anything or clicked on an ad.

I go back to this data all the time. Its absolutely the best thing we seo's can see.

Dave

from ciaran 330 days ago #

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@earlpearl me too. I wish someone at AOL would hurry up & make a screw up again
;)

from flyingmonkeys 326 days ago #

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Yea. That sounds about right. #1 getting 3-4 times the amount of traffic as #2 or #3.
Just remember the stats still show 66% of people choose organic. 33% choose ppc. :)