The Power of Ads
https://medium.com/better-marketing/google-1-position-matters-less-than-before-9966a51dee8a
The author of this medium article explains how Google is pushing to gain even more money because they prioritize more ad results on the top of the page than organic search results. For example, if you google ‘digital marketing’, all the top results that are able to be seen on screen are ads. To further prove what the article says about this example, if you google instead ‘digital marketing’ (misspelling marketing) than no ads at all pop up because no advertiser wants to pay for misspelled keywords! This means that the values of the CTRs of the first page slots increase. However, I disagree with the author about Google’s main motivation. As the highest tier in SEO, Google should place money as more of a byproduct when working on google search improvements.
Over the last 3 years, Google has been adding more slots for advertisers at top of the first page of a search. Therefore, there are less “slots” (spaces) for organic results on the first page. And, I cannot remember the last time I went to the second page or beyond of a google query. According to the author, being the #1 spot of a search does not affect the organic CTR of your website. He suggests to focus more on the quality of the user’s experience.