MARLBOROUGH, 11/25/2009 – People who search by clicking the button on Google’s homepage are fifty percent more likely to go on to click an ad than people who search by any other Google means, according to online ad network Chitika. The study, which looked at just over 11 million impressions, shines a light on the possibility and importance of being able to predict web users’ activity.
When comparing the different types of traffic that come through their advertising network, the researchers at Chitika compared the different types of Google traffic – people who click on the “Google Search” button, people who search by hitting the enter key, people who search from browser toolbars, etc. While the overall clickthrough rate for the entire Google-searching sample was 0.95%, the people who searched by clicking on the search button at Google.com clicked ads at a 1.56% rate, over half again higher.
| Type | Impressions | Clicks | CTR |
|---|---|---|---|
| All Google Searches | 10,307,849 | 97,440 | 0.95% |
| Google Button Clicks | 767,209 | 11,934 | 1.56% |
But the question becomes, why such a high disparity? Why are people who type in their query and hit enter so much less likely to click on an ad than someone who performs a search differently through the same website?
“Sophistication is my guess,” says Rand Fishkin, SEO guru and CEO of SEOMoz.org. “Hitting enter means you’re not moving your hands away from the keyboard and likely indicates a more tech-savvy (and hence, click-sensitive) individual.”
So it appears that advertising click rates are inversely proportional to the “tech-savviness” of the people receiving the ads. By defining a user’s tech-savviness, it’s possible that ad networks going forward will be able to target better and better, driving revenue for websites while showing less ads.
About Chitika
Chitika, Inc., is a search-based online advertising network, leading the way in intent-based advertising and search engine insights. Chitika provides publishers with an innovative way to monetize search engine traffic, and advertisers a new way of generating leads with clear consumer intent. With over 60,000 sites and 2 billion monthly impressions, the Chitika network is the pulse of the online world. Through research and targeting, Chitika continually evolves its image as “the ad network that knows when not to show ads.” For more information, visit http://chitika.com
Contact:
Daniel Ruby
Research Director, Online Insights
Chitika, Inc.
+866.441.7203 x966
press@chitika.com
Very interesting numbers. But it is not clear what stands behind “All Google Searches”. Toolbar is just one example.
This survey also shows that most of searches preformed not from Google main homepage.
.95 ctr? I haven’t seen anything near that..
“Clickers are more likely to click” – well no kidding? What an insight into human behavior 🙂
wow! this study is really interesting and I agree with this report. I don’t know if this post will really help me but I still find it interesting 🙂
Good news, but still need to work more on direct traffics from search engine.
Study is a good revelation.
Chitika, however, needs to acknowledge high Non US / Canada traffic too at its earliest convenience. It can match Google provided it spreads its wings
Gee, guys, who came up with the title of the article, really? I guess, “mouse users” or, better yet “mouse addicts are more likely to click” would describe the findings a bit better…
Anyways, that’s not why I wanted to post a comment. What exactly do you mean by “clicking the button on Google’s homepage?” Do you mean “I’m feeling lucky?”. Because if you click the “Google Search” button, you are not leaving Google’s properties yet. You have to click on a text link in order to visit any site, so what ads exactly did you describe in your write-up? Google’s AdWords? (in which case what does Chitika care) or ads on sites visited from Google search? Then how in the world can you get there by clicking any button other than “I’m feeling lucky” and, more importantly, how would you know that they clicked a button? Anyways, if you clicked on “I’m feeling lucky” you must be so dumb you’d click on anything, really.
So, all in all, given that the audience of this respectable blog is little more technical that your average internet user, would you do us all a favor and put some detail in your future posts that would keep your reader from guessing too much?
Scriptster,
To answer your question, I came up with the name for the article. What I mean by “clicking the button on Google’s homepage” is that they execute their search by entering the search term and physically clicking “Search”, rather than entering the query and hitting enter. The click rate I refer to is, once someone has come to your page via different methods of Google searching, how likely they are to click the ads on your page.
Perhaps the best one-line summary is, “People who execute their Google searches by clicking “Search”, as opposed to hitting enter to execute the search, are fifty percent more likely to end up clicking an ad on your page.”
“I’m Feeling Lucky” has nothing to do with this research, and my apologies if it wasn’t presented clearly. Also, if the headline was too cutesy, again, my apologies.
Quick follow-up, the Google referral that comes in to your page is different depending on the actions of the visitor. The referral URL contains elements that determine where and how the individual visitor performed their search.
It’s similar to the way we target ads to a search query – while the search itself doesn’t take a user away from Google’s properties, when they click through to your site you can see from the referring URL what search query was used. It’s the same for determining where and how the search was executed.
I can see how these number are correct. The reason might be that people who have to click the search button are less used to the internet world (thus clicking instead of just hitting enter) and trust the websites more. In some cases thay probably even cannot tell which links are part of the page and which ones are the advertisements.
I suspect webpages with posted computer programming advice get less clicks than pages about food or clothes…
This is a great post on human behaviour analysis. Does chitika have data for Yahoo and Bing search user click behaviour and CTRs.Probably it might help advertisers abit.
This makes complete sense. I found that when I run a webmaster related site I get a lot less clicks
Because I am a webmaster, I never clicks on other sites, for any link, just gets my info and back to my pavilion.
Daniel, I see what you mean now. I never noticed (or even looked for it) that the Google search page URL differs based on mouse click or hitting enter. Mouse click adds more parameters to the query, so this mush be how you determine if they use their mouse well.
It is a great find, now, let’s come up with a test that determines that “clickers” (“mouse addicts”? 🙂 ) should be shown a certain type of ad and not the other.
For example, there is no good reason to show inline ads to people that don’t have a mouse in their hand (or afraid to use it). You absolutely have to use your mouse to click on that link, so as a web publisher I might as well just keep the page cleaner and skip the inline ads.
Can someone else come up with a good practical application of the phenomenon the study has unearthed?
thanks for chitika i can shared
I will also give a big thanks.