Mobile Search Ranking Study: Rank Number One Or Not Rank At All

seoClarity has published a new click-through ranking study, this one not just looking at desktop search, but more importantly, mobile search. The study finds that if you do not rank in the number one position in the mobile results, the click-through rate drops off significantly, so much so that ranking number barely matters. Here is […]

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seoClarity has published a new click-through ranking study, this one not just looking at desktop search, but more importantly, mobile search. The study finds that if you do not rank in the number one position in the mobile results, the click-through rate drops off significantly, so much so that ranking number barely matters.

Here is the graph showing the drop in CTR from position one with a 27.7% CTR to position two with a 9.2% CTR. Meaning, if you rank number one, you will get three times more clicks than in position two.

ctr-mobile-model-final

When comparing that to the desktop analysis done by seoClarity, you’ll see the CTR drop from position one to position two is much smaller: 19.3% CTR at position one versus 11.4% at position two.

ctr-desktop-model-image-final

This study looked at over 2 billion impressions from Google Webmaster Tools data over a 90 day period, spanning June through August.

To download the study and learn more, see the report here.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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