Standing out in a crowd

New research from Compete.com has revealed the latest statistics showing the relative worth of each position on a search engine’s front page of results for any given search term. Unsurprisingly ranking number one takes the lion’s share of all clicks, with 53% of people heading straight for the very first organic result. After this there is a steep drop off between ranks 2 and 5, with results “below the fold” seeing a very low percentage of clicks.

You can see the full analysis by downloading the report here.

What’s most interesting about this report is the revelation that 55% of all searches return results pages with paid ads – namely the sponsored results you see at the top, to the right and at the bottom of the search engine results page (SERP). This means that there are still a whopping 45% of searches for terms that nobody is paying to target. Is this a missed opportunity or does it reflect the number of searches that are simply not worth monetising?

The report fails to differentiate between brand and non brand terms, which is a shame, however it still makes for interesting reading if you’re keen to know just how much of a difference that jump from 3^rd to 4^th place can mean.