Google click rate for top results

[juan]

Hello all,

I am a newbie here and hope to contribute on a regular basis!

I have got a question related to click rate on Google top results basically I was wondering if there were ‘general figures’ for total click share, let’s say:

1 position: 40% out of total clicks
2 position: 20%
…

I understand these figures vary from keyword to keyword, industry to industry, but would be great to hear your general thoughts.

BTW, found the below figures about AOL click rate for top positions on Jim Boykin's blog, which can be very illustrative:

Results in:
Total Searches: 9,038,794
Total Clicks: 4,926,623

% of clicks
Click Rank1: 2,075,765 42.13%
Click Rank2: 586,100 11.90%
Click Rank3: 418,643 8.50%
Click Rank4: 298,532 6.06%
Click Rank5: 242,169 4.92%
Click Rank6: 199,541 4.05%
Click Rank7: 168,080 3.41%
Click Rank8: 148,489 3.01%
Click Rank9: 140,356 2.85%
Click Rank10: 147,551 2.99%

jimboykin.com/click-rate-for-top-10-search-results/

Look forward to your comments,
Juan

[JohnW]

>40% out of total clicks

Another way to crunch this would be calculating the % of clicks per search (clicks divided by number of searches not clicks divided by total clicks). Based on Jim's AOL numbers, this would show around a 23% organic CTR for #1 position which to me seems low for a #1 result with a good title and description. But in fairness, titles and descriptions are not often as good as they could be. And even though AOL uses Google results, AOL users could hardly be called a representative sample of internet searchers;-)

[freeflyer]

Theres a massive difference between position 1 and position 3 in click rates, and even bigger reductions after that. I guess if you're asking 'do i need to be top in order to get clickthroughs' then no you dont, but you need to be in the top 3 for it to be consistent.