Purchasers and stakeholders typically ask, “How lengthy until my web site (web page) ranks on high of Google?” You might say “it relies upon” and provides a lecture on all of the variables like high quality of the content material, web site power, assets, competitors… or you should use the information under.
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 12 months (down from 5.7% in 2017).
- 40.82% of pages that ranked within the high 10 did so inside 1 month.
- It may possibly 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 previous (up from 59% in 2017).
- The common #1 rating web page is 5 years previous (up from 2 years previous in 2017).
We took 1M random URLs seen by our crawler in September 2023 and regarded if any of them made it to the highest 10 inside a 12 months.
Only one.74% of them did. 98.26% of them didn’t. That’s approach down from 5.7% in 2017.
Filtering a distinct approach 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 12 months. This may be a extra truthful quantity to use.
If a web page was going to rank for the next search quantity time period, it was extra more likely to do it within the 1st month. Decrease search quantity phrases had been extra evenly distributed. 
After ~6 months, chances are you’ll wish to take a look at updating your content material should you’re nonetheless not within the high 10. Your chances are high fairly low after that until you make some adjustments.
If we take 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.
Curiously, it’s sooner now to rank for prime quantity key phrases than it was in 2017, however understand that 94% of the pages by no means really ranked for prime quantity key phrases at all.
To reply this query we took 1.3 million random key phrases (within the US) and regarded on the high 10 rating URLs. We regarded up every of these URLs in Ahrefs, to search 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 High 10 are greater than 3 years previous vs 59% in 2017.
13.7% of the pages seen within the high 10 had been underneath 1 12 months previous, which is down from 22% within the 2017 examine. It appears it might be tougher for brand spanking new pages to interrupt into the highest 10, however a few of the distinction right here might simply be as a result of 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 previous. Again in 2017, this was simply 2 years previous.
Remaining ideas
Older content material dominates. If you wish to rank in Google’s high 10, deal with creating evergreen content material that may stand the check of time and plan to replace it. It possible took a variety of 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.
