Behold the colorful (gay looking) SERP traffic chart…
Did you notice the huge difference between 1st and 2nd place? I’m no math guy, but it looks like the difference is about 42.91%!!! Thats a lot! That 42.91% is the reason why you need to work your ass off for the 1st place for whatever keyword you are going for. You may only get 100 uniques a day right now being in second place, but when you do make it up to first place you might get 500 uniques a day, a huge difference.
Just imagine the amount of traffic you would get if your keyword was getting you 1000 uniques a day being in second place? Just something to think about, don’t be lazy and get that 1st SERPS ranking 
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February 9th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I been working my ass off for serps the past week. Built over 1000 links (for free too). I just made it to #3 for “Guitar Hero 4″ and its bringing in over 500 uniques a day alone. Its nice to know I still have visitors to look forward to. Im working on “Guitar hero 3″ now. Im on page 3 for that. Still getting absolutely shit from adsense though. Just added ttz media hopefully that will help bring some money.
February 9th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
John
Where did you get the image from? Excellent information.
February 9th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Sorry, fat fingers, meant Jon…
February 9th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Yeah, trust me. Its a big change when you finally get 1st.
Tom,
I have had that image forever, there are a lot more articles on this matter, I will try and find somemore.
February 9th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Thanks
If you find it I will do a post on my blog and give you some nice link juice…
February 9th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Hmm… I agree that the best thing to own is the 1st place, but I wouldn’t agree on % of clicks and time spent.
Some 2nd or 3rd results may outweigh the 1st result, if the first one is poorly written. I have managed to do that for some of my websites.
That’s because some websites have much link juice, but really poorly written title and description meta tags.
Example: someone searches for “early spring flower care”
And you get “superbamazingflowers.com - your flowers, flower gifts…etc” as the first result (the title). And the description is also filled with keywords, instead of actually describing the page.
Now imagine the second result is “how to tend to your flowers in early spring” and the description “early spring flower care explained: an easy guide”.
Which one would you click on? Not everyone clicks automatically on the first result, there is a lot of people who actually read to find the best match for their search.
With that being said, quality AND 1st place in SERPs are the best thing to do.
February 9th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I just moved from 2nd to 1st on another one of my big keywords. Ill let you know how it goes as next week comes around. Weekend traffic is skewed cuase all the kids are home.
February 9th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
I do know having a quality site above you does hurt traffic for the lower people though. A site I traded links with was above me and they used to send me 30-40 uniques a day. Now that i moved above them, I got 6 uniques from them today.
February 9th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Sweet chart to visually show the difference, where is the chart from?
February 10th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Well problem is to find teh keyword which has some traffic and there is not much competition arround. I can be first for the dino or thedino but doesnt bring any traffic and in first case there is 1mil competitors and no traffic at all but I have some keywords which has less competitors and brings like 50 visitors per day on the first spots in Google. But I was lucky to find those keywords and become first in SERP. I am wondering if it is possible to do it other way and not just be lucky.
February 10th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
The chart is from SEOresearcher.com
http://www.seoresearcher.com/images/articles/click-distribution-serp.jpg
February 10th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Oh and I think you mean 429% not, 42.9%
February 10th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Between first and second place? Its 42.9% difference..
February 10th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Nope. Click on the link on my name to calculate the real percentage. You are talking about percentage points ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage_point )
February 10th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
If you even round it, 50% and 10% how is 50% only have more than 10%?
February 10th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Blah, can’t even type. basically 56.36/13.45 = 4.19. So as a raw percentage, 56% is approximately 4 times that of 13%, ergo it is over 400% improvment.
For instance if there was 1000 searches up for grabs per month, a 1st position would get you 564 visitors, a 2nd place would get you 136. 415% of 136 is 564.
February 11th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Haha, like I said Im no math guy. But I think we can all agree that is a big difference..
February 11th, 2008 at 7:58 am
[...] Hat tip to Jon Warass SEO Blog for finding the chart. [...]
February 11th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Thats 100% True!
February 11th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
I remember discovering that even being #11 was better than 5,6,7,8,9,10
#11 is #1 on page 2
February 12th, 2008 at 4:38 am
@Jon
Agreed
February 12th, 2008 at 7:38 am
[...] in einem Blog die Unterschiede in Zahlen gesehen, finde es aber dummerweise nicht wieder ( Update: so lange hier mal schauen ). Auf jeden Fall steht schon jetzt fest, dass ich deutlich über 90% des Traffics abbekomme. [...]
February 12th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
[...] Jon Waraas, an image that originally appeared on SEO Researcher, with the click rate for different positions [...]
February 17th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I think you have to consider the first site s also usually the most reliant.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Agree that number 1 is a huge difference but also extremely dependent upon the keyword searched. I’ve got long tail searches that pop to number one, but if I could get a broad keyword to number 1….that’s when everything takes off.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Where did the data come from? Looks great but just curious to see how accurate the numbers are.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:17 pm
[...] found this article stressing the importance of being ranked #1 in Google for your particular keyword. It has a “chart” [...]