How To Grow Your Online Business 4X Overnight

This image from 2006 is getting circulated around the blogosphere right now and for some reason it is the first time I have seen it (credit Seoresearcher.com)

The data represented in the image comes from a Cornell University study on click behavior on search engine result pages. The most interesting point: the difference in clicks between the #1 result and the #2 result is a whopping four times as many clicks for the #1 result! I know from my personal experience with an e commerce website I owned that difference between ranking #1 and #2 for your top keyword can be the difference between breaking even and making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately it is not at #1 as the corporate site it ranked for finally caught up. So while I don’t have hard traffic stats out there for the difference in traffic I know it can have a staggering effect on your business.

The point is if you are lurking around #1 but not there yet it can really change your business to strive to get there. If you are there now you better be doing everything you can to preserve it as search engine rankings are only getting more and more competitive every day and if you don’t think someone is out there building links gunning for you spot you are mistaken. Now this being a controlled study and not “out in nature” I would be interested in hearing your thoughts based off real data on the difference between the #1 and #2 spot on Google, what have you seen?