How much is a Google top ranking worth?

Source: Axandra

The position of your website in Google's search results can make or break your business. High rankings on Google can make the difference between an extremely successful online business and total failure. Yes we can rely on word of mouth referrals but we also need a steady stream of people finding us via major search engines like Google.

This is why search engine optimisation is so important for today’s businesses. But how much exactly is a top ranking on Google worth? What can a top ranking on Google do for your business?

Paid search results are worth $37.7 million per day
Google published its earnings last month. Google-owned sites (i.e. mainly the search results) generated revenues of $3.40 billion in the first quarter of 2008 (that's about $37.7 million per day).

Advertisers wouldn't pay Google so much money if they didn't profit from it. The dollar amount indicates how much it is worth to be listed on Google's first result page. And these numbers only represent the value of the paid search results.

Listings in the natural search results are worth even more
An iProspect study showed that 60.5 percent of Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL users selected a natural (unpaid) search result over paid search result as the most relevant on a sample query. 60.8 percent of Yahoo! and 72.3 percent of Google search engine users chose a natural search result as the most relevant

That means that you will get many more clicks with a natural search engine listing than with a paid listing. However with such high statistics using Google Adwords to target specific keywords will drive even more customers to your business and further increase your opportunity to sell and improve your bottom line.

In addition, studies by Enquiro and iProspect revealed that 60.5% to 70.0% of users trust organic results while only 30% to 39.5% of users trust paid results.

In late 2007, information about an internal Google tool that assigned dollar values to the search results leaked:

It turned out that the Google tool was used by members of the AdWords sales team to help prioritize new customer acquisition.

Natural results deliver a higher return-on-investment
As you can see above, a listing in the natural search results is worth much more than a listing in the paid results:

1. users click natural search results much more often
2. users trust natural search results more

Although natural search results generate the most amount of targeted high quality traffic, there is still a great deal of companies that continue to spend their entire marketing budgets on pay per click advertising instead of investing in natural search engine optimisation.

Optimizing your websites for high rankings in Google's natural search results provides a much better return-on-investment than pay per click ads. The value of a listing in the natural search results quickly pays for the investment you have to make in natural search engine optimisation.

Who controls the search engine market and by what percentage?
Google has a share of 58.7%
Yahoo holds 18.1%
Microsoft 12.0%
AOL 4.1%
Ask 2.4%.