Google Search Engine Statistics 2017
When working in the online marketing space, it’s quite important to understand the ever-changing statistics that search engines have. The clear biggest of which being Google as these stats will show you after reading through this.
If you’re someone, that already has a keen interest in the search engine marketing world, then these stats are here to give you the latest relevant information that you need to know along with a few facts that may still even surprise you. However, there are still quite a few people that don’t believe in what this kind of marketing can do for their business. This article is here to hopefully help you get a better understanding of Google and might even convince you that it’s something your business needs to be involved in.
Search Engines
Before I dive into the stats I’d like to explain a bit about what search engines are. One of the best definitions you’ll find is on Wikipedia.
“A web search engine is a software system that is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are generally presented in a line of results often referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). The information may be a mix of web pages, images, and other types of files.”
Now we have a better understanding of what a search engine does lets dive into the stats.
Google Statistics 2017
There are a number of search engines out there but the reason I’m writing about Google today is that its market share is significantly higher than any of its competitors.
According to netmarketshare.com, latest stats show that Google has 77.98% of the global market share. This shows just how dominant the Google search engine has become to the likes of Bing and Yahoo that only capture over 7% of the market each. Now with this in mind, there is still over 20% out there that use the other services so it would be foolish to completely disregard them but Google is who holds the majority of your potential audience.
Mobile vs Desktop
In 2017, the rise of mobiles has finally surpassed desktop searches. Stats from gs.starcounter.com, show you that from May 2016 to May 2017 mobile searches went from 43% of the global market share to 51%.
Annual Search Stats
The number of searches on Google last year reached 3,293,250,000,000.
In words, that’s “three trillion, two hundred and 93 billion, two hundred and fifty million” searches. That kind of number is quite extraordinary with it averaging out to over 9 billion searches a day.
(source: www.statisticbrain.com)
Paid vs Organic search
For those of you that are unaware of the difference, paid search is the results that you often see at the very top of Googles search results that have a little “ad” sign beside them. These not too long ago used to appear at the side of the search results also before Google changed up its layout. Organic results are non-paid listings that appear based on keywords and algorithms that Google use to determine its position.
A study conducted in 2016 shows that on the first page, the first 5 results equate to 67.60% of the overall traffic, while any underneath only captures 3% of users while pages 2 and 3 get over 5%. Taking all of that into account, that leaves paid results with 15% at the most, as you need to take into account those that would just try another search.
(Source: www.zerolimitweb.com)
CTR on branded and non-branded keywords
An interesting study was done by Adlift which shows that more searches are branded keywords across all platforms. However, there is a higher CTR of non-branded keywords on mobile devices compared to a desktop with over 50% more clicks on position 3 for non-branded keywords than desktops position 3.
The main stats to take away are that on the desktop 46% of CTR comes from the top 3 positions on SERPs, and on mobile devices this number increases to over 58%
(Source: www.adlift.com)
Your ad position affects your CTR rate
A recent study taken from Google AdWords shows that there is a massive decrease in the click through rate from top to bottom. Ads sitting at the top position have an average click-through rate of about 7.11% while position 2 sits with only 3.01% and pos 3 at 2.19%. These stats are all relevant to page 1 of SERPs, any other pages will have a significantly lower rate.
(Source: www.smartinsights.com)
Search Engines effect on E-commerce
A study done shows that search engines cater for 38.55% of traffic on E-commerce websites which is 10x more traffic than social media. This is followed closely by direct traffic which sits at 35.88% and then referral traffic at 19.34%.
(Source: SimilarWeb Global Search Marketing Report 2016)
Mobile search market share
The mobile search market is again dominated by Google who holds 53% of it. Next on the rankings is Yahoo with 7% and Bing with just 1% .
(Source: www.searchenginejournal.com)
Google shopping ads sales have increased
Since a study was done in 2016, Google’s shopping ads have increased spending on them to a surprising 43%. This was due to the amount of partner traffic that came through.
(Source: www.searchenginewatch.com)
Mobile search is crucial for local businesses
When any searches were made with the term “near me”, over 88% of these are on mobile devices and mobile search per year is expanding at a phenomenal rate.
(Source: www.searchenginewatch.com)
Local searches have a high conversion rate
72% of people that made a local search would then visit a store within 5 miles of their location. 78% of these purchases are made offline and 50% will buy something within one day.
(Source: WordStream)
Voice search is becoming more prominent
The number of voice searches has increased to 20% of all mobile queries from 10%. There are a few reasons for this happening, the main one being that the failure rate of voice searches has decreased from 25% to 8%.
(Source: www.thewebmaster.com)
The right-hand side ads were removed to help PPC.
The sidebar on the right-hand side has been removed from Googles search pages. However, this is actually a good thing for those spending money on PPC. This is because between the sidebar and footer results they only equated to 14% of the clicks. This means your paid advertising spend will only be put to better use above the top positions.
(Source: WordStream)
To Sum Up
If you want to give your business an online presence, it is pretty clear that Google is the search engine that takes priority. Although there are audiences elsewhere, Google is what every business should be targeting their online campaign towards. While these stats are here to show you that Google is necessary for any business out there, the number of people that use it on a daily basis is an exceptionally high number that is always on the rise. Yes, it is true that these big numbers aren’t going to directly affect your marketing campaign, but stats such as paid vs organic search should help you understand what kind of marketing is right for you.
Need help with your SEO campaigns? Get in touch to find out how we might be able to be of assistance!
Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.
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