Purchasers and stakeholders usually ask, “How lengthy until my web site (web page) ranks on high of Google?” You could possibly say “it relies upon” and provides a lecture on all of the variables like high quality of the content material, web site power, sources, competitors… or you need to use the information beneath.
I wish to give an enormous due to our knowledge scientist Xibeijia Guan for doing all of the exhausting knowledge elements of this examine, and to our CMO Tim Soulo for his enter. Let’s dig in.
- Solely 1.74% of newly printed pages rank within the high 10 inside a yr (down from 5.7% in 2017).
- 40.82% of pages that ranked within the high 10 did so inside 1 month.
- It may take much less time to rank for high-volume key phrases now in comparison with 2017.
- It takes longer to rank for high-volume key phrases than low-volume ones.
- 72.9% of pages in Google’s high 10 are greater than 3 years outdated (up from 59% in 2017).
- The typical #1 rating web page is 5 years outdated (up from 2 years outdated in 2017).
We took 1M random URLs seen by our crawler in September 2023 and seemed if any of them made it to the highest 10 inside a yr.
Just one.74% of them did. 98.26% of them didn’t. That’s manner down from 5.7% in 2017.
Filtering a distinct manner and 2M random URLs created in October 2023 and solely non-empty English content material, 6.11% of them made it to the highest 10 inside 1 yr. This is likely to be a extra honest quantity to use.
If a web page was going to rank for a better search quantity time period, it was extra prone to do it within the 1st month. Decrease search quantity phrases have been extra evenly distributed. 
After ~6 months, you might wish to have a look at updating your content material in the event you’re nonetheless not within the high 10. Your likelihood is fairly low after that until you make some modifications.
If we have a look at the shortest period of time it took for these pages to rank within the high 10, the information exhibits it takes longer to rank for high-volume key phrases in comparison with low-volume key phrases.
Apparently, it’s sooner now to rank for top quantity key phrases than it was in 2017, however remember that 94% of the pages by no means truly ranked for top quantity key phrases at all.
To reply this query we took 1.3 million random key phrases (within the US) and seemed on the high 10 rating URLs. We seemed up every of these URLs in Ahrefs, to seek out the date when this URL was first seen by Ahrefs crawler.
The SERPs are dominated by older pages. 72.9% of pages within the Prime 10 are greater than 3 years outdated vs 59% in 2017.
13.7% of the pages seen within the high 10 have been underneath 1 yr outdated, which is down from 22% within the 2017 examine. It appears it could be more durable for brand spanking new pages to interrupt into the highest 10, however among the distinction right here may simply be because of the sampled knowledge.
We additionally noticed a transparent correlation between the age of the web page and the way excessive it ranks in Google:
On common, the #1 rating web page in Google is 5 years outdated. Again in 2017, this was simply 2 years outdated.
Remaining ideas
Older content material dominates. If you wish to rank in Google’s high 10, concentrate on creating evergreen content material that may stand the take a look at of time and plan to replace it. It possible took numerous effort for the 1.74% of recent pages rating within the high 10 to get there. Don’t count on to place out mediocre content material and rank for aggressive phrases.
