Better to be first on page 2 or last on page 1?

Marketing
1

Do you think it’s better to be the first result on page 2 or last on page 1?

I feel I often times only check the top results page 1 before clicking ahead to page 2.

If you think it’s better for page 1, is this based on theory or metrics that you have tracked or read (from a reliable source)?

2

As a surfer has to scroll past all of the results on page 1 to even get to where they can click through to page 2, I’d say you’ve got a much better chance of success being at the bottom of page 1 than at the top of page 2.

3

I used to scroll down until the last result of the first page, before I move to the second page. This what most web surfers do, check the best before the least.

4

IMO the first page results only really matters. And also i don’t know whether the users will search after the 4th or 5th result. Only the first 5 result really matters.

5

According to “Prioritising Web Usability” by Jakob Neilsen the results of their usability testing show that 93% of people never go beyond the first page of the results and 53% don’t even scroll to see the ones too far down the page to be immediately visible. From the percentages that click on each position only the top two really matter - the 3rd place and onwards doesn’t get much at all.

Clicks per position (from page 40)

#1 - 51%
#2 - 16%
#3 - 6%
#4 - 6%
#5 - 5%
#6 - 4%
#7 - 2%
#8 - 1%
#9 - 1%
#10 - 2%
page 2+ - 5%

If you assume that 4% of that belongs to page 2 and that the clicks on that page have the same distribution as on page 1 then the number of clicks on #11 might be similar to that of #10 but since all the numbers are rounded to the nearest % the percentages are far too small to be able to determine it from that data. Both positions get too few clicks to matter.

That’s results from the huge number of usability test results that they have obtained from all the testing that they did.

6

Thanks, Stephen. Those stats are great to know.