Investing

Making Search Results Pay

Facebook-F-logo
courtesy of Facebook Inc.
Everyone knows that if a company or product shows up on the first page of results from a search engine query, the chances that the company or product will get noticed, or even better get a click, go way up. But how far up can a company expect to go?

According to the latest data from Experian Marketing Services, the top five sites capturing search activity are Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), with about 8.5% of clicks, Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube, 5.6% of clicks, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) with 2.6%, Wikipedia with 2%, and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) with 1.4% of clicks. These top 5 account for 20% of all search activity and the top 500 sites account for about 50% of all search activity.

The results for paid search are similar: the top 5 sites get 16% of the clicks and the top 50 sites get 56%. The top site is Amazon.com with 4.2% of clicks, followed by Ebay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), Demand Media Inc.’s (NYSE: DMD) eHow, Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY), and Yahoo! Shopping.

Google serviced about 3 billion searches a day in 2011, which means that Facebook gleaned about 255 million clicks every day from Google searches. Even at a 1% rate, that’s 3 million clicks a day. Amazon is paying for around 126 million clicks a day, given its 4.2% activity rate.

Even at click-through rates that are lower than 1%, the top sites get a lot of traffic from searches, free and paid. Big changes at the top are not likely.

The Average American Is Losing Momentum On Their Savings Every Day (Sponsor)

If you’re like many Americans and keep your money ‘safe’ in a checking or savings account, think again. The average yield on a savings account is a paltry .4%1 today. Checking accounts are even worse.

But there is good news. To win qualified customers, some accounts are paying more than 7x the national average. That’s an incredible way to keep your money safe and earn more at the same time. Our top pick for high yield savings accounts includes other benefits as well. You can earn a $200 bonus and up to 7X the national average with qualifying deposits. Terms apply. Member, FDIC.

Click here to see how much more you could be earning on your savings today. It takes just a few minutes to open an account to make your money work for you.

1 https://www.fdic.gov/national-rates-and-rate-caps

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.

AI Portfolio

Discover Our Top AI Stocks

Our expert who first called NVIDIA in 2009 is predicting 2025 will see a historic AI breakthrough.

You can follow him investing $500,000 of his own money on our top AI stocks for free.