Today at AD:TECH Chicago, Atlas DMT released research demonstrating the impact of paid search listings rank on traffic and how marketers can better model and forecast paid search campaigns.

"Paying for the number one ranking may not be the best strategy for all advertisers," commented Young-Bean Song, directory of the research study. "For some marketers the cost of traffic associated with the top ranking may be too high. On the other hand, some marketers are forgoing the top spot, without really knowing how many customers they are losing to their competitors. Most advertisers don't know whether they are paying too much, or needlessly missing out on sales."

The research found that overall, advertisers should expect about a 10 times difference in potential traffic between the top and 10th rankings. The amount of potential traffic drops more than 40 percent between the number one ranking on Google and the search engine's number two ranking. At Yahoo's Overture the drop is more gradual.

The full report is available online at the link below:
http://atlasdmt.com/media/pdfs/insights/RankReport.pdf

I'd be interested in your comments for a future article in the WebProNews.com email newsletter.

Thanks,
Rich Ord
--
iEntry, Inc.

I don't buy that for a second! I have often had pages switch between number 1,2 and 3 on page of one of the Google SERP's. The taffic decrease/increase for the top 3 is hardly noticable.

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Dave
Excel Templates, Training & Software
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Well that would depend alot on "what the #1 ranked site is", "how well the listing describes what's available", "term used", "competitiveness of the term", "site visitor friendliness", and if they have "precisely what the searcher wants".

Argumentatively, it would be possible that a search for "Excel Templates, Training & Software" may produce 5 visitors per day at #1 and possibly 3 at #2 (since the other visitors found what they wanted at #1) and this would be 40%.

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Argumentatively, if my Aunty had b@!!s she'd be my Uncle :)

Nice try Fathom, but no dice I'm afraid.

We are talking generally here, not specifically. There is no way that, generally, traffic would change by 40% between number 1 and 2 positions on the Google SERP's.

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Dave
Excel Templates, Training & Software
Barcode & Fonts
Free MS Office Applications Support

Note that the study examines PPC listings, it's not based on organic search results.

That tends to change things a bit, though honestly, on Google, I would expect the big drop to be between positions #2 and #3 because you go from those top two blue listings all the way over to the group of listings on the right.

Hi,
For some reason, not always, I scroll down past the first couple of results to the middle of the page. I think this is because I don't trust the top results. There seems to be so many affiliate based link pages doing well these days, they anoy me ;-)

Am I alone in doing that?

Regards,
Ben

No, I often go even further and click on the last page in the list of results, then work my way backwards. I find it works quite well. I have started searching in the directories recently since I get better results when looking for a product.

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Simon - Biogas, Rauchgasanalysator and Rauchgasanalysegerät

I advertise with google and overture and I find that there is a signifent difference between 1’st and second.(a hefty premium to increase 40% of traffic)
Thejenn mentioned “That tends to change things a bit, though honestly, on Google, I would expect the big drop to be between positions #2 and #3 because you go from those top two blue listings all the way over to the group of listings on the right.”
But you have to look at things as a whole not all google ads have the 2 highlighted bars on top this is biased on how much you ppc I have found 75 cents to 1.25 will open the top bar position. So on major key fraises this is visible but if you add up all the other phrase search traffic and stack it against your mainstream searches you will find some altering information.
All study’s are bias and all data can be used to push almost any point it looks to me that they are trying to push the war for #1 ad spot to further increase their revenue.
The problem broad terms are so expensive and you receive more irreverent traffic but the first stop of the searcher is typically a broad term then after realizing their results are usually useless to their application then they narrow again and again until they find or give up.
To tap into that fresh potential broad search is valuable but it’s cost can out weigh it’s conversion.

I'd like to see more studies like this done and made available to everyone. I majored in marketing and there were a lot of case studies and resources on marketing. When my school started a course on Internet Marketing, the course's primary focus was Bayesian statistical analysis of cookies to produce demographic profiles. The course also struggled to apply traditional marketing to online marketing and did not include a lot of the practical information in WPW - even though back then there were already lots of Internet Marketing for Dummies books.

But with the sophistication of search engine marketing and the inexact "science" of SEO, I think it would be even better if such studies like this Atlas study were made available... or just conducted more. SEM is ultimately trying to package the content and deliver it to the right target market - so that they can search for it, and get access to what they are looking for, packaged all correctly and ready for them to buy. I think this is the ultimate in marketing, and a lot of the old-time marketing research should be applied towards understanding and analyzing patterns and behaviors of the online market.

Just my own POV.