EconLearn Research · Third edition
Shown 1.3 million times in four weeks, clicked once in 200
Between 22 September 2026 and 19 October 2026 our pages were shown 1,313,281 times in Google Search to people looking up economics, and clicked 6,498 times: about once in every 200 showings. We read the 1,000 queries Search Console lists for that window, which account for 15.4% of those impressions. The most shown was microeconomics worksheets, 8,700 times, with one click.
- Google impressions
- 1,313,281
- Clicks
- 6,498
- Click-through rate
- 0.49%
- Average position
- 7.2
Google Search, 22 September 2026 to 19 October 2026. Over a longer window, 21 July 2026 to 18 October 2026, Bing reports 594.1K citations of our pages in AI-generated answers. Screenshots of both reports are in the proof section.
Updated 2026-10-21 · First published 2026-08-01 · Data window 28 days · Free to quote with attribution
What this is, and what it is not
The source is Google Search Console for econlearn.org, a free AP Economics study site, covering 22 September 2026 to 19 October 2026 (28 days, Web search, all countries, all devices). Across the whole site that window recorded 1,313,281 impressions and 6,498 clicks, a click-through rate of 0.49% at an average position of 7.2. Every query-level figure on this page comes from the 1,000 queries Search Console lists, the deepest it will go. It lists every query that drew a click (589 this window) first, then the rest by impressions, down to 85 impressions. Those queries carry 202,390 impressions and 988 clicks, or 15.4% of the site's impressions and 15.2% of its clicks.
Limits you should hold us to
- This is one site's search data, not a sample of all students. A query appears here only if an econlearn.org page ranked for it. Topics we do not rank for are invisible, so the absence of a concept is never evidence that nobody searched it.
- Search Console withholds rare queries to protect privacy, so the true long tail is larger and thinner than what we can see.
- Impressions are not students. One person can generate many impressions in a study session. The data carries no identity, and none was used or inferred.
- The query analysis is Google only. The Bing section reports citations in AI answers, a different measure, and none of its numbers is added to a Google figure.
- The window falls in the first full term of the US school year, and we published new pages during it, so volume reflects both. We make no seasonal claims.
Six findings
1. Students searched the same two diagrams most, and rarely clicked them.
144 of 1,000 queries used the word graph, diagram, chart or curve: 24,767 impressions, 12.2% of the sample, and 100 clicks. 98 of them, with 17,069 impressions, named a graph, diagram or chart outright.
The two most searched picture queries were circular flow diagram and ppc graph again, as in the second edition. They drew 3,240 and 2,246 impressions at average positions of 7.7 and 8.4, and 2 clicks between them. The picture's share of the sample was 28.7% in the second edition. The two samples are built differently (see what changed, below), so read that drop with care.
| Query | Impr. | Clicks | Pos. |
|---|---|---|---|
| circular flow diagram | 3,240 | 2 | 7.7 |
| ppc graph | 2,246 | 0 | 8.4 |
| circular flow diagram economics | 961 | 3 | 11.2 |
| ppc diagram | 496 | 0 | 9.4 |
| shortage and surplus graph | 460 | 0 | 6.5 |
| budget constraint graph | 393 | 1 | 5.8 |
| econ circular flow diagram | 330 | 0 | 14.9 |
| ppc graph economics | 317 | 0 | 8.1 |
The most searched query of all was not a picture. microeconomics worksheets was shown 8,700 times at an average position of 4.8 and clicked once.
2. Normal vs inferior goods was still the comparison students searched most.
160 queries compared two things, drawing 35,543 impressions, 17.6% of the sample. 14 of them were normal vs inferior goods, with 12,741 impressions: 35.8% of all comparison demand, against 51.9% in the second edition.
A comparison query is a student naming the exact boundary they cannot hold, which makes them useful for diagnosis. Whether a good is normal or inferior decides which way demand shifts when income changes, and it led again. Elastic against inelastic came next, with 28 queries and 6,765 impressions.
21 comparison pairs appear in both orders in the sample; the seven with the most impressions are below. The order changes but the pair does not, which fits two ideas that are learned together and easily confused.
| One order | Impr. | The other order | Impr. |
|---|---|---|---|
| normal good vs inferior good | 3,202 | inferior good vs normal good | 1,175 |
| elastic vs inelastic | 1,743 | inelastic vs elastic | 805 |
| normal goods vs inferior goods | 837 | inferior goods vs normal goods | 486 |
| surplus vs shortage | 675 | shortage vs surplus | 619 |
| gdp deflator vs cpi | 545 | cpi vs gdp deflator | 529 |
| income effect vs substitution effect | 695 | substitution effect vs income effect | 359 |
| consumer surplus vs producer surplus | 452 | producer surplus vs consumer surplus | 181 |
3. Students paste whole quiz questions, answer options included.
30 queries ran to 10 words or more, with 3,923 impressions and 28 clicks. The longest was 119 words.
The median query is 4 words, so most searching still looks like searching. None of the four answer-box strings the second edition found (choose an answer, enter answer, [ select ], (enter one word in the blank.)) appeared this window. What appeared instead were questions pasted with their options. A question on how GDP differs from GNI appeared twice: once with its four options (183 impressions) and once with please select the best answer from the choices provided. a b c d on the end (186 impressions). Others keep the gap where a blank was, or start with the blank itself.
resources used to make goods and services, like raw materials, labor, machinery and tools.
is the act of limiting the types of goods and services produced.
how does gross domestic product (gdp) differ from gross national income (gni)? a. gdp counts the number of citizens in a country, while gni counts the number of citizens abroad. b. gdp measures how happy people are in a country, while gni measures how happy they are internationally. [truncated]
resources are things people use to make goods and provide . the resources used to create goods and services are divided into three main categories: land, labor, and .
monopolists charge prices that are _____________ and produce ___________ output than seller under perfect competition. group of answer choices higher, less lower, more identical, less identical, more
The first is a definition typed in without the word it defines, and it drew 411 impressions. If an assignment's text can be pasted into a search box, some students will paste it.
A smaller group points somewhere else. Nine clicked queries read like replies in a conversation, not like searches: prepare it, i want more options, could you show me a video, any other resources, not digital, like website?, souces, plus berikan sumber rujukannya (Indonesian, roughly “give the reference sources”) and vi du cu the (Vietnamese, “a specific example”). Each was shown once and clicked once. They look like follow-up messages typed to a search assistant, but the report cannot show where they were typed.
4. On the first page, a result was clicked about once in 200 showings.
880 queries averaged a first-page position, with 187,172 impressions and 911 clicks. 353 of them got no click at all, across 91,082 impressions; 40 of those ranked in the top 5.
Leave out the 3 queries containing our own name, which produced 143 of the 988 clicks in the sample, and 997 queries produced 202,163 impressions and 845 clicks, a click-through rate of 0.42%.
We cannot see from this data why a student did not click. What we can say is that being shown and being read have come apart. A result near the top that is never opened is consistent with the answer already being legible on the results page, in a summary or an image. The consequence for a teacher is that a student can arrive at an answer having opened no source at all.
5. Example searches drew more than three times the click-through rate of definition searches.
Queries asking for examples: 54 queries, 6,241 impressions, 65 clicks (1.04%). Definition queries: 115 queries, 18,038 impressions, 55 clicks (0.30%).
comparative advantage example drew 966 impressions and 9 clicks. The most searched definition query, what are the factors of production, drew 1,445 impressions and none. One reading: a definition fits in a results-page summary, while a worked example is harder to fit, so the student more often has to open a page. Excluding rarely searched queries that appear only because they were clicked (those under 85 impressions this window), example searches drew 0.55% against 0.11% for definitions.
6. Almost nobody types “AP”.
23 of 1,000 queries mentioned AP or an exam. That is 2.3 percent, with 431 impressions.
21 of those 23 are in the sample only because they drew a click, on fewer than 85 impressions each. This is a site built for AP Economics, and exam vocabulary is nearly absent from how its visitors search, as it was in both earlier editions. They type the concept. Labelling a resource by unit and exam is labelling it for the teacher rather than the student who needs it at 11pm. Ranked by impressions in this sample, these are the concepts students searched most.
| Concept cluster | Queries | Impr. | Clicks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal and inferior goods | 53 | 26,538 | 20 |
| Elasticity | 85 | 19,649 | 36 |
| GDP, CPI and inflation | 50 | 12,088 | 36 |
| Production possibilities (PPC) | 47 | 11,530 | 23 |
| Circular flow | 40 | 10,330 | 51 |
| Consumer and producer surplus | 21 | 6,667 | 11 |
| Shortage and surplus | 32 | 5,703 | 18 |
| Supply and demand shifters | 24 | 3,607 | 39 |
| Comparative advantage and trade | 38 | 3,075 | 64 |
| Market structures | 11 | 770 | 8 |
| Tax incidence and taxes | 4 | 694 | 4 |
Clusters were built by matching each of the 1,000 queries against a keyword set per concept, so a query can fall into more than one cluster and the columns do not sum to the sample total. The keyword sets are the second edition's, unchanged, so the two tables can be compared; they are listed under how we collected this.
The largest topic outside those eleven sets was factors of production: 71 queries containing factor of production or factors of production, with 24,531 impressions and 76 clicks. It would sit second in the table.
AI answers that cited us, from Bing
Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI Performance report. It counts a citation each time Microsoft Copilot or one of Bing's partner AI services lists an econlearn.org page as a source in an answer it writes. A citation is not a click and not a visit: the person reading the answer may never open the page. Bing also lists grounding queries, the searches the AI system ran to find its sources, which are not necessarily what the person typed.
Over the 90 days from 21 July 2026 to 18 October 2026, Bing reports 594.1K citations and an average of 366 pages cited per day, where a page counts once a day however often it was cited. The number of pages cited in a day rose from 90 on 21 July to 541 on 18 October, with a high of 755 on 28 September. Bing lists 1,768 grounding queries and 750 cited pages for the window, and says its lists are a sample of overall activity. It rounds counts above 1,000 to one decimal place in thousands, and we report them as it shows them.
7 of the top 25 grounding queries name a graph, diagram or curve, by the same rule as finding 1, and 9 ask for a formula or a calculation. circular flow diagram and ppc graph are in the top 25 on both Bing and Google.
| Grounding query | Citations |
|---|---|
| deadweight loss | 6.2K |
| midpoint formula economics | 3.4K |
| supply and demand graph | 3.1K |
| circular flow diagram | 2.6K |
| unemployment rate formula | 2.0K |
| equilibrium price | 1.6K |
| business cycle graph | 1.5K |
| midpoint method economics | 1.3K |
| xed formula | 1.3K |
| law of supply | 1.2K |
| ppc graph | 1.1K |
| consumer and producer surplus | 1.0K |
| supply demand graph | 1.0K |
| total revenue formula | 965 |
| ppc curve | 940 |
| how to calculate unemployment rate | 901 |
| adam smith invisible hand | 893 |
| monetary terms | 869 |
| consumer surplus formula | 856 |
| how to calculate comparative advantage | 831 |
| how to calculate gdp per capita | 805 |
| what is supply and demand | 796 |
| how to calculate consumer surplus | 777 |
| unit elastic | 771 |
| deadweight loss graph | 754 |
| Cited page | Citations |
|---|---|
| /blog/supply-and-demand-shifters-cheat-sheet | 21.8K |
| /blog/circular-flow-model-explained | 17.4K |
| /blog/what-is-deadweight-loss | 15.3K |
| /blog/comparative-advantage-explained | 12.8K |
| /blog/production-possibilities-curve-explained | 12.4K |
| /blog/consumer-and-producer-surplus-explained | 12.1K |
| /sandbox/supply-demand | 10.9K |
| /blog/positive-vs-normative-economics | 10.4K |
| /blog/price-controls-ceilings-and-floors | 9.9K |
| /calculate/midpoint-method | 9.4K |
| /blog/how-to-read-economics-graphs | 8.4K |
| /blog/aggregate-demand-and-aggregate-supply | 8.3K |
| /blog/market-structures-economics-guide | 8.0K |
| /blog/shortage-vs-surplus | 7.7K |
| /blog/market-equilibrium-explained | 7.4K |
The companion report looks at an earlier month of the same Bing data in more depth: how unevenly citations spread across pages, and what the cited traffic did on the site.
Proof
The latest reports, captured 26 October 2026, followed by the two reports this edition's headline figures come from, as they stood on 21 October 2026. Select an image to open it at full size.
Latest, 26 October 2026
Sources for this edition, 21 October 2026
What changed since the earlier editions
The second edition covered 25 August 2026 to 21 September 2026 (28 days) and recorded 459,455 impressions and 2,962 clicks, a click-through rate of 0.64% at an average position of 9.7. That is about 16,409 impressions and 106 clicks a day, against about 46,903 impressions and 232 clicks a day in this window. Average position moved from 9.7 to 7.2; both are the impression-weighted mean of the daily positions. Clicks more than doubled while the click-through rate fell from 0.64% to 0.49%.
The two 1,000-query samples are not built the same way, because Search Console lists every clicked query first. In the second edition 171 of the 1,000 drew a click and the rest ran down to 16 impressions. This window 589 drew a click and the rest ran down to 85. So 411 zero-click queries now, against 829 then, says more about how the list is built than about students. The samples covered 15.4% and 14.3% of site impressions.
The second edition's lead finding was that its two most searched queries were diagrams, circular flow diagram and ppc graph, and that neither drew a click. Its figures and its data file are unchanged and remain citable as EconLearn (2026). What Students Actually Search When They Study Economics, second edition: 1,000 queries from one AP Economics site, 25 August to 21 September 2026. https://www.econlearn.org/research/what-students-search
Second edition findings, as published on 2026-09-24
- 1. The most searched economics query was a picture. 210 of 1,000 queries used the word graph, diagram, chart or curve: 18,769 impressions, 28.7% of the sample, and 40 clicks. 122 of them, with 11,867 impressions, named a graph, diagram or chart outright.
- 2. Half of all comparison searches were one pair: normal vs inferior goods. 131 queries compared two things, drawing 10,451 impressions, 16.0% of the sample. 28 of them were normal vs inferior goods, with 5,427 impressions: 51.9% of all comparison demand.
- 3. Students paste quiz questions whole, placeholder text included. 68 queries ran to 10 words or more, with 2,748 impressions and 1 click. The longest was 117 words.
- 4. Most first-page results ended without a click. 573 queries averaged a first-page position. 457 of them got no click at all, across 31,319 impressions; 59 of those ranked in the top 5.
- 5. Example searches drew about four times the click-through rate of definition searches. Queries asking for examples: 81 queries, 4,804 impressions, 37 clicks (0.77%). Definition queries: 158 queries, 7,333 impressions, 13 clicks (0.18%).
- 6. Almost nobody types “AP”. 36 of 1,000 queries mentioned AP or an exam. That is 3.6 percent, with 1,476 impressions.
| Concept cluster, second edition | Queries | Impr. | Clicks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Production possibilities (PPC) | 171 | 14,711 | 15 |
| Normal and inferior goods | 96 | 11,421 | 8 |
| Circular flow | 87 | 8,734 | 16 |
| Comparative advantage and trade | 72 | 4,166 | 28 |
| Consumer and producer surplus | 46 | 3,279 | 11 |
| Supply and demand shifters | 41 | 2,632 | 13 |
| Elasticity | 66 | 1,878 | 4 |
| GDP, CPI and inflation | 32 | 1,663 | 4 |
| Market structures | 37 | 1,439 | 16 |
| Shortage and surplus | 25 | 975 | 3 |
| Tax incidence and taxes | 7 | 326 | 6 |
The first edition covered 1 May to 30 July 2026 (91 days) and recorded 133,696 impressions and 397 clicks, a click-through rate of 0.3% at an average position of 25.5, about 1,469 impressions a day. 955 of its top 1,000 queries drew no click, and those queries covered 18.8% of its impressions. Its average position came from the Search Console summary; the later editions use the impression-weighted mean of the daily figures.
Its first finding was a definition typed back into the search box to check it, economic profit equals total revenue minus explicit and implicit costs definition, at 601 impressions. Its figures and its data file are unchanged and remain citable as EconLearn (2026). What Students Actually Search When They Study Economics: 1,000 queries from one AP Economics site, May to July 2026. https://www.econlearn.org/research/what-students-search
First edition findings, as published on 2026-08-01
- 1. The single most-searched thing was not a question. It was the back of a flashcard. 601 impressions, 0 clicks, average position 8.0. All 17 queries in the economic profit cluster drew 1,519 impressions and zero clicks between them.
- 2. One search in ten is a homework assignment pasted whole into the box. 98 of 1,000 queries ran to 10 words or more. The longest was 117 words. 224 queries ran to six words or more and 149 to eight or more.
- 3. Ranking on the first page bought almost nothing. 191 queries put us in the top 10 and returned zero clicks, across 5,197 impressions. 63 of those ranked in the top 5. 998 non-brand queries produced 24,843 impressions and 48 clicks, a click-through rate of 0.19 percent.
- 4. A seventh of all demand is students trying to tell two things apart. 143 queries were comparisons, drawing 3,452 impressions, 13.7 percent of the sample.
- 5. Students search formulas they have already written down, to check them. Five near-identical phrasings of one tax incidence formula drew 461 impressions and zero clicks. Calculation queries were 145 of the 1,000, drawing 3,335 impressions and 6 clicks.
- 6. Almost nobody types “AP”. 25 of 1,000 queries mentioned AP, an exam, an FRQ, a unit number or a score. That is 2.5 percent.
| Concept cluster, first edition | Queries | Impr. | Clicks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Market structures | 94 | 2,635 | 10 |
| Elasticity | 79 | 2,054 | 0 |
| Tax incidence | 91 | 1,981 | 1 |
| Economic profit | 17 | 1,519 | 0 |
| Business cycle | 42 | 1,391 | 0 |
| Comparative advantage and trade | 53 | 1,196 | 11 |
| Foreign direct investment | 15 | 1,159 | 0 |
| Inflation and the Phillips curve | 41 | 1,000 | 1 |
| AD-AS, SRAS and LRAS | 26 | 778 | 1 |
| GDP | 41 | 757 | 1 |
| Surplus and deadweight loss | 24 | 677 | 3 |
The top 25 queries by impressions
Verbatim query text as logged, 22 September 2026 to 19 October 2026. CTR is clicks divided by impressions. Position is the mean position of the highest ranking econlearn.org result for that query, to one decimal as Search Console shows it.
| # | Query | Clicks | Impr. | CTR | Pos. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | microeconomics worksheets | 1 | 8,700 | 0.01% | 4.8 |
| 2 | factors of production | 21 | 7,446 | 0.28% | 5.2 |
| 3 | pareto efficiency | 0 | 6,544 | 0% | 7.1 |
| 4 | gdp deflator formula | 0 | 3,931 | 0% | 7.9 |
| 5 | normal vs inferior good | 1 | 3,862 | 0.03% | 7.7 |
| 6 | inferior good | 1 | 3,321 | 0.03% | 9.6 |
| 7 | circular flow diagram | 2 | 3,240 | 0.06% | 7.7 |
| 8 | normal good vs inferior good | 3 | 3,202 | 0.09% | 7.9 |
| 9 | normal good | 0 | 2,880 | 0% | 9.6 |
| 10 | 4 factors of production | 2 | 2,697 | 0.07% | 7.0 |
| 11 | marginal utility formula | 4 | 2,439 | 0.16% | 7.4 |
| 12 | ppc graph | 0 | 2,246 | 0% | 8.4 |
| 13 | circular flow model | 13 | 2,072 | 0.63% | 5.4 |
| 14 | ppc curve | 0 | 1,836 | 0% | 9.6 |
| 15 | elastic vs inelastic | 0 | 1,743 | 0% | 4.7 |
| 16 | perfectly inelastic demand | 0 | 1,550 | 0% | 8.2 |
| 17 | what are the factors of production | 0 | 1,445 | 0% | 5.3 |
| 18 | four factors of production | 3 | 1,440 | 0.21% | 7.0 |
| 19 | factors of production in economics | 5 | 1,437 | 0.35% | 7.2 |
| 20 | coase theorem | 0 | 1,417 | 0% | 7.1 |
| 21 | perfectly inelastic | 1 | 1,345 | 0.07% | 6.6 |
| 22 | what is a normal good | 0 | 1,306 | 0% | 9.4 |
| 23 | consumer and producer surplus | 5 | 1,203 | 0.42% | 7.1 |
| 24 | inferior good vs normal good | 1 | 1,175 | 0.09% | 8.7 |
| 25 | supply shifters | 4 | 1,152 | 0.35% | 7.0 |
How we collected this
- 1. Opened the Google Search Console Performance report for the econlearn.org domain property on 21 October 2026, range set to the last 28 days, which resolved to 22 September 2026 to 19 October 2026, search type Web, no country or device filter.
- 2. Summed the report's 28 daily rows for the site totals: 1,313,281 impressions and 6,498 clicks. Average position is the impression-weighted mean of the daily positions.
- 3. Copied the report's Queries table, the 1,000 queries Search Console lists (every clicked query first, then the rest by impressions), with clicks, impressions and position for each. These are the rows the export file holds, but the report shows click-through rate and position to one decimal, where the second edition's export gave two. We recomputed click-through rate from clicks and impressions and used positions as shown.
- 4. Classified every row by keyword match for query shape (graph, comparison, example, definition, exam vocabulary) and by word count, then summed impressions and clicks per group. Concept clusters use the same method, so they overlap by design. The keyword sets are the second edition's, recovered by re-running them on its export until every published count matched. The definition set is the exception: the one below gives 162 definition queries on that export, against the 158 the second edition published.
- 5. Read Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report for www.econlearn.org on 21 October 2026, range set to 3 months, which resolved to 21 July 2026 to 18 October 2026: the totals, the top 25 grounding queries and the top 15 cited pages, as displayed.
- 6. No sampling, weighting, extrapolation or modelling was applied. Every figure is a count or a ratio of counts from those reports. Nothing was inferred about any individual, and no query is attributed to anyone.
The keyword sets
A query belongs to a group if its text contains any of the listed words or word parts.
- Graph queries: the word graph, diagram, chart or curve (singular or plural); named outright means graph, diagram or chart
- Comparisons: vs, versus, difference between, compare to, compared to or comparison
- Examples: example
- Definitions: defin, meaning, what is, what are, what does, whats or what's
- Exam vocabulary: AP or exam as a word
- Our own name: econlearn or econ learn
- Production possibilities (PPC): ppc, ppf or production possibilit
- Normal and inferior goods: normal or inferior
- Circular flow: circular flow
- Comparative advantage and trade: comparative, absolute advantage, terms of trade or free trade
- Consumer and producer surplus: consumer or producer, followed later by surplus
- Supply and demand shifters: shifter, determinant(s) of supply or demand, shift(s) in supply or demand
- Elasticity: elastic
- GDP, CPI and inflation: gdp, cpi or inflation
- Market structures: monopol, oligopol, perfect competition or market structure
- Shortage and surplus: shortage
- Tax incidence and taxes: tax incidence, tax burden or per unit tax
Cite this
You are welcome to quote any figure here, in a lesson, an article or a paper. We ask only that you link back so readers can check the method.
EconLearn (2026). What Students Actually Search When They Study Economics, third edition: 1,000 queries from one AP Economics site, 22 September to 19 October 2026. https://www.econlearn.org/research/what-students-search
Download the data
The 25 highest-impression queries, with clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position for each, as published above. CSV, released under CC BY 4.0, so you may reuse it anywhere with attribution. The earlier editions' files are linked under what changed.
econlearn-top-queries-2026-09-to-10.csvCompanion report: how AI search engines cite economics pages, from the same first-party data.
Questions about the method, or want a cut of the data we did not publish? Get in touch. The report was compiled by Jude Wallis, founder of EconLearn.
The pages behind these searches
- Printable worksheets with answer keys
- The four factors of production, with examples
- Normal vs inferior goods, the income test
- The circular flow model, with the diagram
- The production possibilities curve (PPC), graphed
- Comparative advantage, with five worked examples
- Graph sandbox: drag the curves yourself