How many results does the average person click on after doing a search?

Question

When I do a search on a search engine on the web I tend to open up a number of results to check them all out one after the other. I wondered if anyone knew of any research on this -- do most people just click one result or do they open more?

Answer 1

I never seen any data on this, but my bet would only a 2 or 3 and certainly be that if what they want doesn't come up on the first page they will give up.

Answer 2

Heres a little bit of info directed toward your question....I use a web search engine designed to reduce overlapping results. It is called a meta search engine, it searches 14 of the top search engines to give you the most accurate and up to date results....

# More Relevant, Useful Results
The leading search engines have a overlap in their top 20 results of around only 5% so our combined results provide a more comprehensive search experience. Also because each search engine only indexes a percentage of the total Web page available, and they update at different frequency, our combined results are always drawn from a source larger and more current than any single search engine index.

# Sponsored Listings
30% of searches are made with a purchase or purchase enquiry in mind. In these cases, advertisers (sponsored results) are more useful than free results. In fact search engine users are twice as likely to make a purchase from them as they are from a free listing. By aggregating all the advertisers together, Info.com offers more of them than any major search destination. If you cannot find vendor information on Info.com, you are unlikely to find them anywhere else.