Ask Kalena

Oooh you're back! Lookin good. Have you lost weight? Yes, that was a compliment designed to butter you up for my next question. Subscribed to my feed yet? :-)

Ok, so I know this study is a few years old now, but for some reason, I’m seeing it for the first time this week and the graphic is a powerful one that I wanted to share.

A few years back, Cornell University ran an eye tracking study using undergraduate students to determine how people interact with Google SERPs. They instructed the students to perform searches in Google for 400 different queries, covering a diverse range of topics including movies, travel, music, politics, local and trivia.

Here’s the meat:

The study concluded that eye fixation on the first two listings took up half of the user’s attention span. After the second listing, the eye fixation dropped sharply. Search results 6 to 10 received roughly equal attention.

In terms of click through, nearly 80% of web searchers clicked on the top 3 search results, with  the top 5 spots receiving 88% of traffic. Most fascinating was that the difference in the number of clicks between position #1 and position #2 was over four times!

While the advent of Google personalized search, real time search and social search since the study has likely impacted these results somewhat, it still proves the power of holding a Top 5 position on Google, particularly a #1 if you can swing it.

Having recently attained a #1 position for a highly competitive search term where I’ve sat at position #2 for many months, I can personally vouch for the turbo boost impact of the top slot.

What about you? Have you noticed any trends that would verify the results of this study even today? Please share your observations in the comments.

Dear Kalena…

I see some of the SEO Consultants guarantee for 1st page listing in Google is this possible to guarantee for 1st page listing?

Thanks

This is one of the most common questions that we, as SEO’s have to deal with and the short answer is “No”. No company (other than the search engines themselves) can, with 100% certainty, ensure you a 1st page listing in the organic search results. The paid / sponsored listings are a little different and it is quite possible to guarantee those results, but not for the organic stuff.

[shameless plug] A couple of years ago I discussed this on my own blog with the post What rank checking and nose picking have in common, but even Google advises against using SEO’s who guarantee results. They state:

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

While we, as SEO’s are often quite confident in our skills which have been acquired through years of testing, reading, experimentation and interacting with other SEO’s – the fact of the matter is, we have no control over what (and when) search algorithm changes are going to happen. Further to that, the results that one persons sees may differ considerably due to geographic locations, personalised search data / history, universal search, local business search listings and the list goes on and on.

If you’d like to read more information on this topic, Rand at SEOmoz has put together a great post about Why Reputable SEO Firms Don’t Promise Guaranteed Search Engine Rankings.

Hope this helps

Peter Newsome
SiteMost – Brisbane SEO

Dear Kalena…

I was wondering if you have an active ppc program if this hurts you in natural search optimization since your paying for keyword placement. Why would Google/Yahoo rank you high if your already paying them lots of money. I tested this by pausing my Yahoo ad for 1 month and sure enough my keywords are all on front page when beforehand they were are pages 3-5. Too nervous to do with Google since we spend a lot per month.

Billy

Hi Billy,

This is a topic which has been much debated over the years, but the short answer is No, running a PPC Campaign will have no “direct” impact on your rankings.

People have speculated that using PPC might improve your rankings (as a reward by the search engine) or – as you’ve have suggested – decrease your rankings (presumably to encourage people to click on the ads).

It should be very easy to test, and many people have tried to prove it one way or the other – but I am unaware of any conclusive proof.  Even though your test seems to suggest a correlation between your PPC and organic rankings, you only appear to have done a part of the test.  In order to prove the correlation you would need to turn on and off your PPC campaign over an extended period and track this against changes in your rankings.

In my opening sentence above, I emphasized that there is no “direct” effect, because running an aggressive  PPC campaign could in fact have an indirect impact on your organic rankings – in a couple of different ways :

1. By running PPC you will get extra traffic in a shorter amount of time, and the data that this generates can help you to tweak and improve factors that can influence your organic rankings.  For example, through using a broad range of keyword phrases on your campaigns – and by looking at the impressions you get, you will get an idea of which phrases are being searched most often.  You should also be able to determine which keywords are converting better.  By focusing your optimisation efforts on high volume and higher converting phrases, you will boost your rankings and your sales or enquiries.
2. Running PPC will also raise the visibility of your brand and your site. You will be getting extra visitors – and if they like what they see they are likely to link to your site.  This in itself will also improve your organic rankings.

Andy Henderson
Ireckon Web Marketing

I recently wrote a piece for SiteProNews on Google Caffeine and thought I’d share the link with you here.

The article covers a search query experiment I undertook comparing SERPs on the existing uncaffeinated Google and Google Caffeine. The results are surprising!

See this visual comparison for a snapshot.

Check out the full article here:

Google Caffeine – A Taste Test

A couple of bloggers have reported seeing breadcrumb trails in Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) lately, meaning they may be testing the inclusion of breadcrumb navigation as part of site snippets.

Breadcrumb navigation shows the user’s path in relation to their current location. It’s the little trail of keywords you often see at the top of the page, below the main header image telling you what section of a site you are on. There’s a good explanation here.

Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped blogged about seeing breadcrumbs in Google SERPs as far back as July. Leo Fogarty has seen a couple of results on closely related search queries.  Now Chris Crum of Web Pro News reports a few random instances of breadcrumb SERP usage.

Google have always encouraged webmasters to use breadcrumb navigation for usability purposes and now they’re apparently going to reward webmasters who take their advice by including breadcrumbs within their site snippet.

Here’s a screengrab of how breadcrumbs look in the Google SERPs for the search query “car hire Spain”:

As you can see, the keywords in the breadcrumbs that match the search query are bolded, meaning that they are included in the algorithmic ranking factors for that query. So potentially, the use of breadcrumb navigation as an SEO tactic has just become a whole lot more important.

A check of the pages displaying the breadcrumbs in their snippets confirms the use of breadcrumb navigation and the exact breadcrumb trail included in the snippet e.g. http://www.auto-europe.co.uk/car-hire/Spain.cfm.

I personally haven’t seen any crumbed SERPs but it’s apparently quite rare so far, with the testing possibly limited to UK sites.

Have you seen any? Please let us know via the comments below.