According to a recent study done by Chitika, the top spot in Google gets twice as much traffic as the number 2 spot, and three times as much as third place. The research report, called “The Value of Google Result Positioning”, reveals that:
“The top spot drove 34.35% of all traffic in the sample, almost as much as the numbers 2 through 5 slots combined, and more than the numbers 5 through 20 (the end of page 2) put together.”
The biggest jump, percentage-wise, is from the top of page 2 to the bottom of page 1. Going from the 11th spot to 10th sees a 143% jump in traffic. However, the base number is very low – that 143% jump is from 1.11% of all Google traffic to 2.71%. As you go up the top page, the raw jumps get bigger and bigger, culminating in that desired top position.
In 2006, a study done fo traffic trends at AOL served up roughly the same results:
