It’s a trend that has been growing for years, but the number of “zero-click” searches on Google continues to grow (where a zero-click search is one where the user doesn’t ever click through to a website).
In a recent post on the SparkToro blog, Rand Fishkin points out that in 2024 only 360 of every 1,000 searches lead to a result on the open web. That means that 64% of visitors to Google never end up visiting a traditional website, which is a huge number.
The problem is two-fold:
First, many search questions are answered right on the page, either with a simple answer from Google or with an AI-powered result.
Second, Google does as much as it can to send users to other Google properties. Rand explains:
Equally concerning, especially for those worried about Google’s monopoly power to self-preference their own properties in the results, is that almost 30% of all clicks go to platforms Google owns. YouTube, Google Images, Google Maps, Google Flights, Google Hotels, the Google App Store, and dozens more means that Google gets even more monetization and sector-dominating power from their search engine.
This trend is unlikely to slow down, much less reverse, so we need to start coming up with other ideas to continue to be found online. SEO is going to become a much more challenging game if Google is literally sending fewer visitors to websites.
At the same time, Google search continues to be the dominant player in the search market and that doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Even with Google taking more of the pie for themselves, there are still many billions of visitors that Google sends out to the web every month, and ignoring that completely would be foolish.
If and when Google takes their next big step into AI-powered results remains to be seen, and likely will have a big impact on things, so I’m sure I’ll have more to say as things continue to develop. For now, I encourage you to check out Rand’s full post to dig into the details.
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