In other words, we can conclude that there is a strong bias in favor of clicking the top link, though not so strong that link quality is irrelevant. Link >>
From the “research shows tricycles are instable” department, Jacob Nielsen covers some research that shows people click the top link in search results, even when the researchers swap the first and second links around.
Well, yeah.
Why should people do anything different? They’ve typed in a search phrase and trust Google to do the job it’s in business to do. Whether that top link is the “right” link or not, the search engine is pretty much the only tool in the user’s toolbox. Of course they’re going to trust it.
(I need to figure out a way to charge $1K/day to state the obvious).
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