AOL Accidentally Releases Coveted Organic Search Data

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.