9600 exact searches position 3 but only 125 clicks????

[tempowebdesign]

Seeing something a little strange on one of my clients sites.

They are position 3 in Google and the only result on the page Google Authorship installed on their site.

Exact match terms in the UK via Keywords tool are 9600 yet they only get 125 clicks on average for the month.

There rank has not changed in the last 3 months and they have had a solid position 3.

[JonathanRolande]

That's interesting. I checked out my webmasters account and it's similer for me. We're UK based as well.

Perhaps we just need to take these numbers with a pinch of salt.

[MattAntonino]

My first two thoughts:

1. Possibly #1 and #2 are answering the query.  Without knowing the actual search term, it's hard to say.

2. The search term may not match the meta description or the description may be (sorry) just crappy.  It's hard to say without the term and link of course.

If your description isn't catching visitors, my first thought would be to try changing it and just track next month vs. this month.  If you want to either PM the actual data or if you can post it, we could look further into it but without that, there are many reasons it "could" be not getting clicks.

[Bondara]

This is the problem I have had in the past,

If an authoritative site which everyone knows such as gov.uk ranks first position and the user can find the answer to their query on that site, you are out of luck.

You have to be #1 and that's a hard task when your fighting against wiki, gov.uk etc.

Without a doubt your search term is not a browsing term, I would be inclined to guess it's a question and your client is supplying an answer.

[JonathanRolande]

I thought google changes the meta discriptions depending on what the user is searching for.

Is this not true in all cases then?

[Chris.Menke]

James,

Taking into account the numbers you get in the tool are far from exact and the traffic estimates that were extrapolated from AOL click through data released in 2006, your numbers could certainly be considered right on the mark.  It's very surprising to recognize the difference in traffic between just a couple of places in the search results, isn't it!