I saw a cool research article on training.seobook about the importance of top ranking in Google search results.
In general, the whole article looks interesting so I decided to translate it. It allows you to see things from a slightly different perspective

An example of action research

Patrick is the moderator of one of the forums and is responsible for running the Bingo Card Creator website which is currently ranked fifth on Google's Bingo Card statement (when I wrote the article I personally checked the issue and the website was paralyzed 5th to 6th).

# 5 Google gives him 6,000 unique visitors every month.

The value of the number 1 exited from the AOL study is 8.5 times its value or 6,000 * 8.5 = ~ 50,000 individual samples per month.
His website currently earning $40 per thousand views.
When it comes first on the SERP "Bingo Card", the monthly income is approximately $2,000.

You can do this calculation for any keyword you find in search results as it is a very important search value.

Google SERP can make or break your business

After reading the web resources carefully, I found a topic on WebmasterWorld how Google allows other webmasters to destroy your rankings. A forum participant nicknamed "Hissingsid" said this:

"Sabotage is a serious problem. The harder Google's anti-spam team works, the greater the damage. Also, the damage itself doesn't have much of an impact on your website. In fact, In our market, even a 3-point drop can destroy your business. ”

When you think about how many businesses are relying on search results, it gets awkward and search is big business. Google revenue for the first quarter of 2008 was $ 5.19 billion and website revenue was $ 3.40 billion. If they can't make enough money, then advertisers won't spend that much money.

The direction of view during the search

Gord Hotchkiss combined two eye-movement studies to show how users perceive search results.



The attention of Google in the upper left corner of the search results page

How your attention sink while you go down the page?

The ads in the right column usually don't attract much attention

Another CTR Study

A friend of mine, Patrick Gavin, found this picture on SEO as a Service. It shows the results of Cornell's eye behavior study, which was not thorough enough.