How to calculate estimated number of visitors by ranking postion

[htdawg]

Hi,
does anyone know how you can calculate the estimated number of visitors
you might potentially get by rank

for example keyword phrase x has 50000 searches per month
and if you were #1 for that phrase you would theoretically get
X amount of visitors

for #2 position x amount of visitors
for #3 position x amount of visitors

and so on..

I found a website somewhere with percentages
like the #1 position had 42% of the traffic ect..
but I cant cant find it again.

Thanks

[goodroi]

it is very hard to get an accurate number. the estimate of total traffic for a keyword varies and can vary alot. google adwords, microsoft adcenter and other keyword tools will all give you a different number.

even if they did all agree on a number, it would not take into account the traffic fluctuation based on time & day. (ie business keywords get more traffic monday-friday during 9am-5pm).

lets say those fluctuations dont matter. you still have to deal with google universal serps. google is constantly adding and removing local listings, news headlines, twitter posts and so much more. if you have a clean serp then you are ok but if google puts 7 local listings above the web results then you'll see a big decrease in traffic which makes trying to estimate this very hard.

even if google never uses a universal serp layout for your keyword you still cant get a very accurate % of CTR because CTR can vary widely based on the title and snippet for your site vs the title & snippet of all the other sites. i have seen some sites ranking #1 with a title tag of "index". i would think that the site ranking #2 with a title of "free widget" would get way more clicks even though its ranking #2.

if you see a website listing % CTR by ranking position, make sure to ask to see the research behind it to make sure its not a guess. also check the date of the research. i would not want to make business decisions based on how people used the internet 10 years ago. good luck

[jimsthoughts]

if you search google for
click through rate serps
you'll find lots of that data.
Most is from the AOL data that was released about 3 years ago.
that data showed that:

% of clicks
Click Rank1: 42.13%
Click Rank2: 11.90%
Click Rank3: 8.50%
Click Rank4: 6.06%
Click Rank5: 4.92%
Click Rank6: 4.05%
Click Rank7: 3.41%
Click Rank8: 3.01%
Click Rank9: 2.85%
Click Rank10: 2.99%

1st page: 89.82%
2nd page: 10.18%

How accurate is that today? Not sure...this was aol, 3 years ago...before universal, local, suggestions, etc.

[Noximus]

yes, jimsthoughts
is right...

top 5 rankings get 70-80% of all traffic.
1st gets about 40-50% of all traffic, that depends on the description, the search engine shows for the website.

[BenFox]

I'm with Goodroi on this one. It's too complex to simplify into one universally applied number.

But if it's any help from personal experience I use the following;

#1 and #2; 30% - 20% ctr
#3,#4 and #5; 15% ctr
#6 -#10; 5%-2% ctr

[ChristeneMint]

Yes it is difficult to calculate estimated number of visitors by ranking position, but if you are at #10, then you have a similar advantage till the 20th position similar to the 10th.

[aakk9999]

#1 position had 42%

This was from visitors that clicked through. I seem to remember that roughly half searches did not result in click on any result. So if you do take AOL data as a VERY crude measure, then you have to rougly halve these percentages from jimsthoughts post above.

But I would also go with what Goodroi says - it is too difficult to calculate - just seeing your search figures from WMT makes it obvious that much more is at play - you may think you are #1 for something, but in fact in a great percentage of searches you are in fact not, even though every single search you try on various PCs shows otherwise.