Statistics
The long tail, page one, and the price of a click
The figures below come from published studies by Backlinko, Ahrefs, SparkToro, First Page Sage and Google. Each one links to the original page, with the year it was published or last updated. Numbers are shown exactly as the studies report them — nothing is adjusted or estimated.
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The long tail
A handful of head terms get the volume; the long tail gets the queries. Each one is small, but there are millions of them — and a new share appears every day.
91.8%
of search queries are long-tail
Queries with 1–100 searches a month, in a sample of 306 million US keywords.
Source: Backlinko, 2020
3.3%
of total search volume comes from those long-tail queries
Small individually — which is exactly why one domain cannot cover them.
Source: Backlinko, 2020
93%
of keywords get fewer than 10 searches a month
Share of the Ahrefs US keyword database.
Source: Ahrefs, 2026
15%
of daily searches have never been seen before
As reported by Google. Keyword tools cannot list what has not been searched yet.
Source: Google, 2017
Where clicks go
Page one is not a level playing field: the first three results take more than half of all clicks, and page two barely exists. Ranking for many small queries beats fighting for one big one.
Average organic CTR by Google position
Positions 1–3 highlighted: together they take 54.4% of all clicks.
| Position | Click-through rate |
|---|---|
| #1 | 27.6% |
| #2 | 15.8% |
| #3 | 11% |
| #4 | 8.4% |
| #5 | 6.3% |
| #6 | 4.9% |
| #7 | 3.9% |
| #8 | 3.3% |
| #9 | 2.7% |
| #10 | 2.4% |
Source: Backlinko / Semrush, 2025
What happens to a Google search
United States, June 2019 — 40 million browser-based searches.
- Organic click45.25%
- Ad click4.42%
- No click50.33%
| Outcome | Share of searches |
|---|---|
| Organic click | 45.25% |
| Ad click | 4.42% |
| No click | 50.33% |
Source: SparkToro / Jumpshot, 2019
54.4%
of all clicks go to the first three results
From 4 million Google search results (Search Console data via Semrush).
Source: Backlinko / Semrush, 2025
0.63%
of searchers click a result on page two
Ranking eleventh is almost the same as not ranking.
Source: Backlinko / Semrush, 2025
58.5%
of US Google searches end without a click
2024, desktop and mobile: answered on the results page or abandoned.
Source: SparkToro / Datos, 2024
360
of every 1,000 US Google searches send a click to the open web
Not to a Google-owned property and not to an ad — the clicks a satellite site competes for.
Source: SparkToro / Datos, 2024
What a lead costs
An organic-search lead costs roughly half of a paid one in B2B SaaS — and unlike ads, the pages keep working after the budget stops.
Average cost per lead, B2B SaaS
Organic search versus paid channels, 2022–2025 client data.
Source: First Page Sage, 2025
$164
average cost per lead from organic search, B2B SaaS
The same lead from paid channels costs $310 on average.
Source: First Page Sage, 2025
$310
average cost per lead from paid channels, B2B SaaS
Averages across First Page Sage client data, 2022–2025.
Source: First Page Sage, 2025
How long ranking takes
New pages rarely reach the top ten inside a year, and the pages that hold #1 are old. A network that starts publishing early compounds; a page published late waits.
1.74%
of newly published pages reach the top 10 within a year
About two million pages created in one month, followed for a year.
Source: Ahrefs, 2025
13.7%
of top-10 pages are less than a year old
The rest have been ranking — and earning links — for years.
Source: Ahrefs, 2025
5
years — the average age of a #1 ranking page
Up from about two years in the 2017 edition of the same study.
Source: Ahrefs, 2025
About these figures
Market figures are curated by hand from the linked studies and reviewed when a study is updated; definitions follow the source (for example, Backlinko counts a query as long-tail when it has 1–100 searches a month, and First Page Sage reports averages, not medians). Live platform counters are aggregated across the whole platform once an hour — never per customer — and cached in your browser for five minutes.