Statistics and Monitoring

What percentage of people click on the first listing in Google?

Only Google knows for sure, but estimates range from about 40% to 50%. AOL once released their data, which suggested that 42% click on the first listing. “Heat map” studies tend to lean more towards 50% or more.


How do I use Google alerts to monitor the SERPs?

All you have to do is get a Google account and then go to Google Alerts. There you enter the keywords you want the tool to monitor the SERPs for, choose “comprehensive,” choose the frequency you want to receive the alerts and then enter your email address where you want to receive the alerts.

Once you’ve completed those simple steps, you’ll get alerted when new pages that use your keywords appear in the search engines.

You can also use this tool to monitor your backlinks as they appear in Google. Just enter this search term into the alerts field: link:www.yourdomain.com/filename.html

Replace the above URL with your actual link, of course.


How can I track the number of backlinks I have?

There are a variety of tools available to you, such as using the Yahoo! Site Explorer, Google Webmaster tools (check the links report) and SEO Quake.

Using these tools is preferable to searching directly in Google. That’s because searching manually generally yields only a sample of the sites that are linking to your site.

Ultimately they’re all wrong! Don’t obsess about tracking these things just focus on building more.