Searches without interactions: what to do to avoid losing traffic?
Although it was anticipated, the day a long-awaited piece of news finally arrives marks a turning point, especially when there are irrefutable numbers to corroborate reality. Last June 2019, for the first time, more than half of the searches performed on Google.com resulted in no interaction with any of the results; that is, they didn't generate a single click. Major digital marketing portals have echoed this news, which, as I mentioned earlier, is backed by real data provided by the American data analytics company Jumpshot. This platform aggregates, stores, and organizes literally trillions of anonymous interactions per day, providing an endless amount of valuable information for decision-making by brands and e-commerce businesses. It's worth noting that the data Jumpshot used for its study refers to the analysis of more than 40 million searches performed on Google.com in June 2019, via desktop and mobile devices (including tablets) in the United States. It is possible, therefore, that the data would differ somewhat if the same study were conducted in other countries, but it is true that this trend has been observed globally for years, making this information undoubtedly valuable and representative of a shift towards a different way of consuming information through search engines. In fact, if we analyze the graph of data for the second quarter of 2019 (April, May, and June 2019), we can see that zero-click searches already represented 49.761% of all searches analyzed. In this case, the data sample analyzed consists of more than 140 million searches performed on Google.com in the second quarter of 2019 in the United States, including desktop and mobile devices. It's also interesting to note that a significant portion of searches end up going to one of Google's properties, whether it's a google.com subdomain (such as maps.google.com), YouTube, or another brand belonging to the Mountain View giant. These properties often rank highly in many search results, further reducing the likelihood of users clicking on non-Google snippets. If we broaden the timeframe and analyze the last three and a half years, we can detect a clear trend: searches without interactions have grown almost exponentially and steadily, now representing more than half of all searches. The data sample used for the trend graph above consists of over two billion searches performed on Google.com in the United States, from January 2016 to June 2019, using all types of devices. Although the upward trend in searches without interactions is evident (as is that of searches that end in a click on a paid result), to truly appreciate the increase of this type of search over time, it is necessary to break down the data by differentiating between queries made on mobile and desktop devices, since not only are these devices usually used differently (due to the different screen sizes and the time of use to which they are usually associated), but it is also necessary to take into account the impact that ads, rich results (featured snippets), answer boxes, video and image carousels, etc. have, especially on the small screens of a mobile device. It's clear that there's a very marked trend on mobile devices, indicating that the click-through rate (CTR) for organic searches has been steadily declining, dropping 15 percentage points in just three and a half years, from 41.44% at the beginning of 2016 to 26.68% in June 2019. In other words, currently only one in four organic searches performed on mobile devices generates a click on any of the results. Conversely, clicks on paid results have more than tripled, perhaps due to the various ad formats that are increasingly optimized for mobile phones and tablets. This data is obviously very interesting (for both publishers and advertisers), since more than half of all searches globally are performed from a mobile device. The same trend graph, but filtering the data for searches performed exclusively on desktop, provides a very different picture of how organic, paid, and non-interaction search traffic has evolved over the last three and a half years. The graph shows how the percentage increases (or decreases) in all three search types are much less pronounced on desktop, although the trends are the same as those observed in the mobile search analysis. But what does this data mean for a traffic manager, a digital acquisition director, or someone who simply wants to grow their online presence? Mobile is here to stay. Unless there are surprises, it seems clear that the spread and use of mobile devices will continue to increase (remember that more than half of all searches are already performed on these devices), so it's reasonable to assume that organic search will continue to generate less and less traffic due to the combination of increasingly effective ads and rich results offered by Google, especially through answer boxes and feature snippets. The importance of having an omnichannel strategy. The game is changing; there's no other option but to accept it. Focusing on a single channel (whether direct investment in paid traffic, or in content and links to improve organic ranking) can be very costly, and may not fully capitalize on the opportunities available.
