What Do People Really Click In Search Results And How Do These Trends Affect Your Website?

The major search engines are now busy conducting studies that show us the actions of users doing searches online.

Results from major search engines that monitored searcher behavior over the past year are showing blended results on general search terms. It seems as though along with the generated search results, there are also other results popping up for things such as news, videos or images relating to the search item.

When search engines were not implementing this, users had to do a very specific search to render results.

The results from the studies conducted show the following findings for the habits of searchers using major search engines:

• When blended search results are shown, news links are the most popular.
• When doing a specific search, images seem to be the most clicked on results.
• When blended search results are available, 17% of users will select a video type of result, while 10% of users choose the same option from a specific search.
• When blended search results are show, 36% of users will select results containing news while 17% of users choose the news related results from a specific search.
• When blended search results are provided, 31% of users choose the image related results, while 26% select an image result from conducting a specific search.

Trends are also indicating that being placed on the first page of search results is crucial to your website.
Some of the significant findings are shown below:

• Since 2004, the number of users who click on the first page of search results rose from 62% to 68%.
• As few as 8% of users surf past the first 3 pages of search results to make their selection.
• Since 2004, users who redo their search after not finding what they are looking for within the first 3 pages of search results went up from 42% to 49%.
• In the past years, the number of users who feel the companies and sites at the top of the search results page are also top in their field rose from 33% in 2002 to 37%.

So what do these trends mean to your website?

You need to be on that first page of search results in order for your website to succeed.
If your website is not in the top 10 for search results you need to consider taking action to get it in those coveted spots. In addition to having your spot in the top 10, you also need to ensure that your website is attractive to users and that they will choose your site from the search results.