In December of 2018, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, was asked a set of questions by the United States Congress. His responses left… a lot… to be desired.
Source: Google 12/11/2018 Congressional Hearing Notes
Thankfully, when I told friends from clickstream data provider Jumpshot about this, they were able to send me numbers that give far better answers to Congress and the American people (at least those who find their way to this post) than what Mr. Pichai provided.
According to Jumpshot*, in Q1 2019 Google’s US web search engine:
Those aren’t perfect answers to Congress’ questions, but they’re way closer than what Google delivered. And, if looking at them makes you feel like things are rough for web creators, publishers, and marketers focused on organic search traffic, you’re not alone. But, keep reading. There’s some light at the end of this tunnel.
Below, I’ve made a chart showing a visual look at what happens after searchers performed a browser-based query on Google.com in the US last quarter.
This visual’s data is inclusive of both desktop and mobile searches. It shows that despite the rise of both zero-click searches and paid search clicks (covered in more detail below), organic search clicks are still very much alive. In fact, for every click on a paid result in Google, there are 11.6 clicks to organic results. SEO is far from dead.
In the past, my analyses of Google’s Click Through Rates (CTRs) have failed to include a crucial element that I’m adding here: clicks back to Google’s own properties.
The data tells us that 6.01% of all searches (~12% of all clicks) end in a click from Google… right back to another Google owned property. Here’s a list of all the domains I asked Jumpshot to include: