An Example of This Research in Action
Patrick, a moderator on our community forums, runs a Bingo Card Creator website which recently ranked #5 in Google for bingo cards.
- A #5 ranking sent him 6,000 unique visitors per month.
- A #1 spot, using the leaked AOL search data (referenced later in this document), is worth 8.5 times what #5 is. 6,000 * 8.5 = ~50,000 uniques per month
- His site currently makes $40 for every 1,000 pageviews.
- His estimated income from ranking #1 for [bingo cards]: $2,000 a month.
You could do this type of calculation for any keyword you rank for that has significant search volume. You can use some of the other data points listed below to create similar calculations - even if you do not rank yet.
Google Rankings Can Make or Break a Business
While perusing the web I came across a WebmasterWorld thread about how Google allows other webmasters to damage your rankings. A WMW member nicknamed Hissingsid stated
Sabotage is a serious problem and the more that Google's spam team seems to do the worse it seems to get. The damage doesn't have to be that big to have a massive effect on your site's performance. In our market even a 3 place drop can ruin your business.
It is scary to think how reliant many businesses have become on search, but search is big business. Google pulled in $5.19 billion in revenues in the 1st quarter of 2008, with $3.40 billion from Google's websites. Advertisers would not spend that much unless they profit from it.
How Much Are the Search Results Worth to Google?
Not once, but twice Google has accidentally publicly displayed values on their search results. But unfortunately both times the values were encoded and we can't see that data all the time.
