Postion in 1 and 2 or 9 and 10?

click throughs and positions

[gorsey]

I was thinking to myself, while getting minimal click throughs in about the 6th ad.........

I think we all agree that being listed near the top gives you a generally better click through. So what about being top of the second page? would that be better than bottom of the first.

Personally i think this might be the case. As i have seen people browse the top, and then immediatly skip to the next page.

Anyone had exp of this?

[roitracker]

There's no substitute for testing, but...

If you assume 10% click a top listing & 1% click a bottom listing, and 30% of users browse to page 2 of the SERPs, for every 100 searches:

Position 1-2: 10 clicks
Position: 6-8: 1 click
Position: 9-10: 10% of 30 = 3 clicks

For these (totally arbitrary) figures, then position 9-10 will do better (and have a cheaper CPC).

However, CTR's will depend on the keyword, ad copy, ad position, user, and organic results - it's pretty impossible to hazard a guess really.

[Chndru]

roitracker, you would also want to add in the people who click multiple ads, which is quite common, if you are trying to "survey" before making a decision.

[roitracker]

Personally, I wouldn't make any decisions based solely on the CTR - I also use conversion rate, cost per sale & profit margin to determine the optimal ad position.

[eWhisper]

For many KWs (and this might be a general rule - not sure), if you look at the top 2 positions on page 2 (assuming there are premium advertisers on page 1) they are the same ads. Being in the premium position means having an ad on every page for these KWs regardless of how many advertisers there are.

So being the top of page 2, requires you be the top of page 1 - unless you are talking about the sidebar ads. In those cases, test your ROI - I've seen where the bottom of page 1 is better than page 2, and vice versa - depends on the viewing habits of your demographic.

[digitalv]

I'm an AdWords and Overture user and have gotten great results from them both, but I have to say that when I personally search on Google my eyes tend to skip over the top two results because I know they're advertisements. However if I don't happen to find what I'm looking for on the first page with Google, I rarely click to Page 2 - I usually just refine my search. If at that point nothing is coming up, occasionally I'll click on one of the side AdWords.

Based soley on my own usage, being in the top two "paid" results hurts more than it helps, since I naturally skip over those.

[eWhisper]

digitalv,

Unfortunately, I think, that how the people who use this board search, is not revelant to most advertisements - not to sound arrogant, but we know too much.

I was in one of my clients offies the other day, and he wanted to see what ads I had running for his company. He did a search, missed his ad, as it was in the premium position, as you mentioned - and the ad needed to be pointed out to him. He said he wasn't sure that he liked his ads being there as he missed them when actively looking for them.

An hour later, he was looking for a product on the web, did a search, and automatically clicked on the top premium ad as it looked revelant. After it was pointed out to him that he just clicked the ad position he missed, he thought about it, and then did a quick unofficial office survey, and realized that many people in his office click on those top ads without thinking of them as ads.

CTR and ROI speak louder than our search habits.