Every website wants to be at the top of the search engine results pages, given that most Google searches turn up tens, if not thousands of results. People don’t want to wade through pages and pages, so generally glance through the first page alone. Obviously it’s better to be among the top few search results, but there’s a surprising fact about the top ten – that being no. 10 is actually preferable to being no. 8 or 9. This is down to a psychological trick; people are more likely to skim through the penultimate numbers and then alight on no 10, the last spot on the first page. It’s due to taking a last look at the results on the first page before they stop looking at the results of the search altogether.
In fact, the no. 10 result actually sees more clicks than 8 and 9 put together. Most internet users don’t bother clicking through to the second page of a search result, so no. 10 is the last result that they bother looking at on the first page. However, it only seems to be 8 and 9 that are affected by this tendency to skim through. No. 7 scores higher clicks than no. 10, so it’s clear that not all middle-ranking numbers are ignored by searchers.
Unfortunately for websites, it’s difficult to manoeuvre the results of a search and avoid your site taking the no. 8 or 9 spot. In addition, every site would prefer to be aiming for the first few spots in the search results; no. 3 would be preferable to no. 10. So there are limited possibilities for capitalising on this situation, although if your site does land at no. 10 you will at least know that you shouldn’t be alarmed about being at the end of the first page. There would be an issue if your site drops off the first page, given that fewer people click through to a second page of search results. But if you can keep your site on the first page, your chances of getting increased traffic are higher – as long as you can avoid those two less desirable spots!
