A recent survey has found that most people expect to find what they are looking for on the first three pages of online search results. Here are some more figures from that research…

• 62% of those surveyed clicked on a result on the first page, up from 48% in 2002
• 90% of consumers clicked on a link in [the first three] pages, up from 81% in 2002
• 41% of consumers changed engines or their search term if they did not find what they were searching for on the first page

These numbers are nothing new to most of us, but they do reinforce the fact that if you want to grow your SE traffic, it’s pretty much essential to appear in the top 30 or so results.

And ideally in the top 10.

(via the BBC)