Understanding how click distribution works in SERPs is like how a shoe manufacturer understands the human foot to make good shoes. The more information the manufacturer has of the human foot, the better the shoes he makes.

How users interact with the results page can be a vital piece of information for any SEO campaign to be successful. Obviously, ranking first in the search engine rankings page is the ultimate goal - everyone knows that. But does that mean the subsequent items on the list apart from the first are nada? The question is this: how high in the SERPs does your website have to be in order to be successful?

In 2004, Laura A. Granka, Thorsten Joachims and Geri Gay of the Cornell University conducted a study regarding how users interact with the results page of a www search engine. Using a sample of 26 undergraduate students, they tested 397 queries on the Google search engine and by using eye tracking devices, obtained critical information on the users' tendencies in evaluating links before finally selecting one for further searching.

The data acquired yielded interesting results. As expected, the first on the list captured the most attention; what's interesting were the rest of the items. The second item rivaled the first in time spent, then after that the time distribution tapered sharply then leveled off by the 6th item and onwards. While there is over four times difference in number of clicks between the first item and the second, the second item and the third have roughly the same number of clicks, and the same goes with items 4, 5 and 6. Item 7 has a noticeable lack of clicks, while items 8, 9 and 10 have again roughly the same number clicks.

Also, it's important to note how users' tendencies to "explore" first the entire list before finally making a selection, or if they explore the entire results page at all. For example, if a user clicks on the 5th item, would he check first items 3 and 4 above as well as 6 and 7 below before selecting the 5th?

The figure above shows that aside from the fact that users do tend to browse items above and below the selection, they will also check the entire SER page until they find what they are looking for. Also it is important to note that as the users' selections go lower, they proportionally view more of the search engine list as well. Again, we see that item 7 is the odd one out-this is because on most search engine browser windows, the 7th item often fell directly below the windows page break, which users tend to skip when scrolling down. Here, it shows how almost the entire page is examined before the 7th entry is finally selected-9 items were checked (6 above, 3 below) before users selected item 7.

Here's a heat map model Oleg Ishenko (of SEO Researcher) interpreted from the Cornell University experiment:

As you can see, the heat map model (plus figures 1 and 2) gives us important facts that we already know of-but probably didn't yet understand. The higher your website is on the search engine rankings page, the lesser the chance your potential visitors will "deviate away" from your site. There are other useful insights as well, such as users tending to browse the entire page until they find what they are looking for. Also, certain placement seems to favor more than the others, as proven on the relatively lack of clicks on entry 7.

It's a long accepted facet in SEO that that ranking within the first page alone can already spell success to your website. However, by also taking advantage of how users interact with search engine results page, it is possible to further improve a website's success in the SERPs-perhaps regardless of even not ranking first or second in the search engine ranking page.

This is just like the original metaphor I've used earlier, the better your shoe fits your customer, the less they will try other shoe brands.

Reference: Eye-Tracking Analysis of User Behavior in WWW Search