I stopped by the Firefox website today looking for some new add-ons and came across the perfect blogging tool.  Performancing had developed a plug-in that allows you to control all of your blogs through one easy to use interface; while I have not had the opportunity to test out all of the features, the ease of use makes it one of my new favorites. One drawback is the powered by performancing link it auto installs (see below), but for the ease of use I can deal with that.

powered by performancing firefox

AOL accidentally released some organic search data* for one day and from that data a smart math-minded SEO in the Earners Forum figured out click through rates for the top 10 positions in search results. This is some key info that could be used to project Google’s SERP % breakdown. I got wind of the news from another Internet Marketing Innovator

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

Click Rank1: 2,075,765
Click Rank2: 586,100 = 3.5x less than ^
Click Rank3: 418,643 = 1.4x less than ^
Click Rank4: 298,532 = 1.4x less than ^
Click Rank5: 242,169 = 1.2x less than ^
Click Rank6: 199,541 = 1.2x less than ^
Click Rank7: 168,080 = 1.2x less than ^
Click Rank8: 148,489 = 1.1x less than ^
Click Rank9: 140,356 = 1.05x less than ^
Click Rank10: 147,551 = 1.05x more than ^

Gordan Tebbutt makes further use of the information in the comment section of Jim Boykin’s blog.

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%

1st page: 4,425,226
89.82%

2nd page: 501,397
10.18%

*AOL uses Google organic search results.

Thoughts on Data

Marketing Sherpa has noticed, as presumed, users are becoming more and more shallow in their search (staying on the first page). This data reflect’s the 2006 search engine user’s behavior. When compared to 1996, these numbers might look quite different. People want results and they want them even faster than ever before.

Marketing Sherpa has also identified, through the years, users have become more search engine-loyal than they used to be. Six to seven years ago, users had to search in more than one search engine to receive enough relevant topic information.

I remember in high school using DogPile because of its combined search engine results. I used this engine to satisfy the “more than two references” requirement for research papers. At the time, this was supposed to remedy the non-relevant results and having to use multiple engines.

Alas, seven years later DogPile.com still uses the antiquated meta tag search platform and remains in the “other” category on search engine market share graphs. Combining results was a good differentiating feature at the time. Today, people want one authoritative source. Although user demogrpahics vary, Google is that authoritative source for research and infomation. Yahoo! and MSN may hold the trophy as more relevant , but still less popular consumer search engines.

Here are a few link buiding methods that may destroy your brand or get your site banned/penalized/filtered from major search engines, or both.

Forum Spam

1. List 100 Web sites in your signature file.

2. Exclusively post only when you can add links to your sites in the post area.

3. Post nothing but “me too” posts to build your post count. Use in combination with a link-rich signature file.

4. Ask questions about who provides the best [WIDGET], where [WIDGET] is an item that you sell. From the same IP address create another forum account and answer your own question raving about how great your own site is.

5. As a new member to various forums, ask the same question at 20 different forums on the same day.
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If you have been using AdWords for very long, you know that Google rewards advertisers for high click-through rate, as well as punishes advertisers for low click-through rate. I mentioned this in the previous post.

Discovering the click-through benefits of the Google Checkout icon got me thinking of some of the other less obvious techniques that may increase CTR and save advertisers money.

These tips are targeted more toward the seasoned AdWords junkie that has mastered ad copy and call-to-action, but needs that extra edge over their competition. Using these techniques will not replace a well-written A/B split tested ad. These are merely suggestions that could increase CTRs, on a normalized scale. As with any changes, all should be tested before taken as a hard and fast rule for your specific ads.

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