The Luck of the Draw: Position 10 is Better 9

One of the mind-blowing data points we shared in the StomperNet Click Fu video was that position 10 in the search results often gets more clicks than position 9.

In a review of pagination UIs, Jesper spots a great reference that replicates this datapoint (previous citation).

In Accurately Interpreting Clickthrough Data as Implicit Feedback, position 10 clicks are reported as 4% versus the 1% of position 9.

Surprising perhaps? There are two potential explanations, one pedestrian but with practical implications and the other lofty with practical implications that are harder to derive.

#1: White space and the end of the scroll pane combine to create a much greater ease of access for result #10 than #9. This is especially the case if the footer is long and result 9 may scroll offscreen. Independent of this, typical whitespace layouts at the bottom of the page make result 10 easier to read than result 9.

#2: There's a cost function evaluation going on in the user's head. This evaluation is essentially estimating the probability of success versus the cost of trying. The cost of trying the next page of results is a lot higher than the cost of clicking position 10, or even position 9. The sense of relevance is a more complex function, but position 10 is given an overall boost in capturing clicks as it's less effort.

So, no, I don't recommend you aim for position 10 instead of a higher rank, it's luck of the draw at that stage. That said, a double listing will increase click probability no matter where you're ranked.