Approx 52% of Google SERP clicks goes to slots 1-10, but where do the other 48% go?

Question

I have been pouring over some various figures whilst putting together CTR / cost / earning calculations for ad runs I'm about to start, however I've been missing some, of what I think are, key base figures for what to expect from AdWord position placement.

For example, this whitepaper from Slingshot SEO is fantastic, however it seems to really only give results on the normal SERP 1-10 figures in the primary SERP content area.

So, for example, in this study we see that about 52.34% of traffic goes to the first 10 results. But, of the "global monthly searches" from AdWords, where do the other 47.66% of clicks go?

Along these lines, the 3 questions in my mind are:

1. What percentage of google visitors abandon search results?
2. What percentage of clicks go towards > 10 search results?
3. What percentage of clicks go to AdWords?
   • Of these, is there more breakdown of which AdWord slots are most valuable (based on percentage)? (This helps determine how high one should go in the CPC bid level.)

Answer 1

Here is a graph that shows what percentage of clicks go to links in each position of the search results:

source

The graph shows that the rest of the users click on some other result further down. When you hear that 50% or more of users click on the first result, that is only out of the users that click on some result as opposed to not clicking on anything or clicking on something else such as an ad. Here is data about other actions:

source

While 50% of organic clicks may go to the first result, only 40% of users click on the organic results at all. That means that the top organic result only get about 20% of searchers clicking on it. About half of searchers don't click on anything. They either get the information they need directly from the search results, find that nothing in the search results meets their needs.

Answer 2

I saw your question and originally was prompted to respond because the percentages I am familiar with are very different...kind of an urban myth but I thought 'Page 1' Google saw 90% of the traffic, and somewhere I read that AdWords gets 50% or more of traffic (grumble, grumble). However, a quick search turned up this article from Jan 2012 that discusses the article you reference and a couple others and looks at the issue in a broader perspective (different search engines, different queries, etc.).

That said, more precise definitions notwithstanding, it is either going to pages beyond page 1 or to pay-per-click ads from the search engines.