Ahrefs (May 2025, Patrick Stox, 1M random URLs) — only 1.74% of newly published pages rank in the top 10 within a year (down from 5.7% in 2017)

Claim: Ahrefs' May 2025 study by Patrick Stox (1 million random URLs crawled September 2023, tracked over the following year) found that only 1.74% of newly published pages rank in the top 10 within a year. The same study compared against an equivalent 2017 figure of 5.7% — i.e., the share of new pages reaching the top 10 within a year has declined by roughly 3.3× over eight years.

This is the central empirical anchor for the length and severity of the Stage 1 invisible window (J-curve Stage 1 — invisible window (≈Months 0-6): Google must crawl, index, and accrue trust; traffic is near zero regardless of content quality).

Source: Ahrefs, Patrick Stox, May 2025; 1M random URLs crawled September 2023.

Confidence: Verified (named source, methodology disclosed, large sample).

Caveat: Ahrefs is a tool vendor whose product helps with SEO — but the number itself (low base rate) cuts AGAINST the typical vendor incentive to oversell SEO. It is therefore a defensible figure to quote. The sample of "newly published pages" skews toward the quality side of the web; the figure describes the distribution of outcomes, not a forecast for one site.