Google’s New SERP Tool and How Many Visits you get Depending upon Keyword Ranking

I wanted to check out the SERPs (search engine results pages) to see how content was ranked for a particular keyword phrase for one of my customers. For example are there mostly information articles, YouTube videos, website advertising, etc. to give me a better idea of how to help them rank for the keyword phrase when all of a sudden a new tool appeared at the top with an option in the upper right-hand corner.

So, I tried it again with another keyword phrase I have been getting traffic on (DIIB Reviews).

If you look below you will see the new option on the upper right hand to enable SERP features and this new box located at the top of my searches. I had no clue where it came from. Was it a new feature of a Chrome extension? Was it one of my paid subscriptions online? Was it from software on my laptop? It turns out it was from Google itself. They noticed that a keyword phrase I typed in matched one of the keyword phrases that a site I have registered in Google Search Engine already ranks for.

This new SERP tool gave me the option to stop viewing info on this particular website in Google Search Console, stop viewing this info on all of my websites, or view all. I selected the option view all!

When the “SERP features” is enabled in the upper right-hand corner. You will see large gray numbers telling you the position and if there is a featured snippet on the page the letters FS appear in front of it.

This new tool gives you options where you can select the last seven days, 28 days or 90 days and it will give you a comparison for the last time period. Then there is a little drop-down arrow where Google will give you tips on how to improve this. Following the link ‘site performance‘ takes you to the Google Search Console and following the link ‘Find out how‘ just takes you to generic advice in Google on how to improve your website.

With this new information from Google, I thought I would test it out with Moz’s estimation of traffic. I had ranked #1 with this keyword phrase before, but this time I am ranking #2. Here is a screenshot of Moz’s tool on this particular keyword phrase below.

Google states that I received 669 impressions and the Moz Tool states that this phrase is searched for 101 to 200 times per month. Now you cannot really judge the two because someone may have gotten an ‘impression’ from typing another keyword phrase that is close to this one.

Google states that I received 188 clicks to my website from this keyword phrase and Moz says that this keyword phrase is searched for 101 to 200 times per month. That seems pretty accurate to me!

I decided to test other keyword phrases with Moz’s tool to see how things compare. Here are the results.

As you get lower in ranks you would expect the number of actual clicks to be lower than the number of times searched for per month. For example, a higher percentage of people will click the website in position 1 when compared to position 7.

Going over the results Moz seems to be pretty damn accurate. Of course, there are so many factors that can skew the results such as Brand/Company Name, location of the search, device used to do the search, topic of the search, etc.

This brings up a good point. Just exactly what percentage of searchers click on number one, number two, etc.?

Using data from 2013 here are the results. The column ‘Percentage of Google Traffic’ displays the percentage of traffic from Google which would also include paid search, image search, shopping cart searches, etc. so if we were to reflect how much organic traffic search comes from each position (organic traffic only) it is shown in the last column.

Even back in 2013, it shows how important it is to be on the first page of Google to get any real traffic to your website. Today the numbers are getting skewed even worse and it is important to get ranked in multiple different ways instead of just organic searches to get traffic to your website. If you are looking at organic-only searches you not only have to be on the first page of Google but you have to be ‘above-the-fold’ which means seeing your results without having to scroll the page. If there are paid ads, maps, featured snippets, etc. mixed in with the SERPs (search engine results pages) the ‘real estate’ above the fold gets even smaller.

If you by the numbers in the example below and use only the source of organic traffic and you are listed in position 10 you will only have a 7.38% chance on someone clicking to go to your website. I know it sounds bad but if that phrase is searched for 100 times a month that means 7 visits. If it was searched for 1000 times a month then that means 73 visits.

Now we can look at a study done on July 9th, 2018. The percentage of getting your website clicked for the top three positions has not changed much. But depending upon the topic of the search will yield different results.

Although the estimated number of clicks to your website can vary upon many factors if you combine your reports with Google Analytics and your sales you can get a nice baseline on what is effective and what is not.