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120+ Spectacular SEO Stats: Your Ultimate List of Search Engine Optimization Statistics

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a constantly growing and changing field, moving as fast as the internet itself. Keeping abreast of changes in the world of SEO can be an enormous task, but it doesn’t have to. In this post, we’ve gathered the most interesting – one might even say spectacular – SEO stats for modern marketers to know.

These SEO stats come from real studies done by a variety of statistics and marketing companies, and they provide a clear overview of SEO’s continued importance, as well as big changes happening in areas like mobile and voice search. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll be able to create a future-proof SEO strategy that will allow you to outrank your competition.

Spectacular SEO Stats

Your ultimate list of search engine optimization statistics

⭐ General SEO stats ⭐

😮 There are over 1.7 billion websites on Google as of 2019 [3]

🔥 Google searches take up 78% of searches done worldwide [2]

📈 There are 5 billion Google searches a day [2]

  • The most searched term on Google in the US is “facebook” [4]
  • The 2nd most popular search term on Google in the US is “youtube” [4]
  • Microsoft’s Bing holds a 33% market share of the search engine space [5]
  • Google made over 116 Billion dollars from prioritized ads in 2018 [6]
  • The top trending searches in the US in 2018 were “World Cup” and “Hurricane Florence” [7]
  • The average person searches something 3-4 times a day [8]
  • In 2019 it is estimated half the world’s population use the internet everyday [9]
  • The first search engine, Archie, was invented in 1990 [10]
  • Leads coming from SEO have a 14.6% conversion rate [22]
  • 28% of local business searches result in a sale [22]
  • 80% of people like advertisements based on their location [22]
  • Roughly 33% of people will check online before going to a store to buy something [22]
  • Smartphones generated 40% of e-commerce purchases in 2018 [22]
  • Over 70% of shoppers use their phones to buy online [74]
  • 82% of businesses have not claimed their listings on Bing [22]
  • While in an actual store, 82% of smartphone users still grab their devices to help them make a product decision [23]
  • 91% of smartphone users grab their phones for ideas while completing a task [24]
  • Google’s Consumer Insights report a 900%+ increase in “near me tonight/today” searches [25]

💡 15%-20% of searches on Google have never been performed before [2]

✍️ Content is the 1st most important on-page SEO factor [15]

  • 61% of professionals believe that their online marketing efforts, including SEO are effective [11]
  • Search engine related spending is estimated to hit over 80 billion dollars by 2020 [12]
  • 90% of consumers haven’t made their mind up regarding a brand before starting their search [26]
  • Organic SEO is about 5.66 more effective than paid SEO [26]
  • 16%-20% of searches are being searched for the first time [2]
  • 10% of people look for detailed content when going to Google [27]
  • We saw 15 major Google algorithm updates in 2018 and 7 in 2019 so far [28]
  • 90% of searches from desktops are made on Google [29]
desktop search stats

🗞️ Title tags are the 2nd most important on-page SEO factor [15]

💸 70-80% of users ignore paid ad listings [16]

  • 75% of SEO is off-page and 25% is on-page [14]
  • 89% of consumers start their buying process by using a search engine [17]
  • Having a video on your landing page increases your chance of being on the first page of Google by 53% [18]
  • Marketers in the US will spend $103 billion on interactive media in 2019 [19]
  • 50% of consumers who conduct a local search on their phone visit a store within a day [20]
  • 18% of local searches lead to a purchase within a day [20]
  • Over 40,000 Google searches are made every second around the world, which translates to 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year [2]
  • 50% of local searches are looking for local businesses [21]
  • 86% of people use map listings to find the location of a business [21]
  • Every year, somewhere between 16% and 20% of Google searches are completely new, with terms never searched for before [30]
  • 34% of “near me” searches from desktop and tablets result in store visits [32]
  • PPC Visitors are 50% more likely to purchase something than organic visitors [33]
  • On average, businesses receive $2 in revenue for every $1 spent on Google Ads [34]
  • 72% of marketers report that content creation is their most effective SEO tactic [35]
  • 50% of search queries are 4 words or longer [26]

🛍️ 35% of product searches start on Google [31]

💳 Companies are predicted to spend $79 billion on SEO by 2020 [37]

YouTube
  • YouTube is the second most used search engine [38]
  • A well-optimized video is 52 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than a text article [39]
  • 79% of survey respondents say that video streaming platforms make them happy [70]
  • When looking for information, 65% of searchers choose results based on relevancy to their search query rather than company name [40]
  • 88% of users trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations [41]
  • 61% of internet users do online research before making a purchase [42]

📒 SEO stats on search engine rankings 📒

  • Pages ranking #1 often have 35,000 backlinks or more [44]
  • Google takes into account 200 unique factors when evaluating who to rank on which spot [45]
  • The average page ranking on the first page on Google contains 1,890 words [44]
  • Long-tail keywords make up the vast majority of all Google searches [73]
  • HTTPS/SSL is an important ranking factor [44]
  • Pages with images outrank pages without images [44]
  • Google changes its ranking algorithm ~9 times a day [28]
  • More than 97% of all results #1-#9 feature at least one image [44]
  • Adding a blog to your website improves the chances of being ranked highly on search engines by 434% [46]
  • Pages with shorter URLs rank higher [44]

🖱️ SEO statistics on clicks and click-through-rates 🖱️

  • The first organic desktop listing gets 19%-32% of clicks; The first organic mobile listing gets about 27.7% of the clicks [47] [48]
  • The top 3 Google search results get 75% of all clicks [48]
  • Less than 1% of searchers click on anything on the second page of Google results [48]
  • Ranking #10 will give you more clicks than ranking #9 [48]
  • Positions #8-#10 produce nearly the same number of clicks, with the difference being no greater than 0.15% [48]
  • Search results with a unique meta description get ~6% more clicks than those without [48]
  • 85% of clicks from search engines are made on organic results rather than advertised results [33]
  • Organic Google results with 3-4 words have higher CTR than titles with 1-2 words [50]
  • 66% of distinct search queries result in 1 or more clicks [28]
  • 21% of searchers click on more than one result [28]
  • Moving up one SERP position increases CTR by 30.8% [48]
  • Using a question in title tags results in a 14.1% higher CTR [48]
  • Titles between 15-40 characters have the best organic CTR [48]
  • URLs that include a keyword in them have a 45% higher organic CTR than those without [48]
clicks seo

🚦 Stats on traffic from SEO 🚦

🚗🚚 94% of the organic traffic comes from Google [26]

🔍 Organic search drives 51% of traffic [52]

💰 10% of all traffic comes from paid search [51]

  • The biggest marketing challenge to most companies in 2018 was getting more web traffic [11]
  • 40% of revenue results from traffic coming in through organic sources [52]
  • Companies, on the average, make more money from organic listings than other traffic sources [51]
  • Organic search accounts for more than 70% of traffic in the business services industry [51]
  • When Google went down for mere 5 minutes, global internet traffic dropped by 40% [53]
  • More than 40% of online revenue comes from organic traffic. [52]
  • Updating and publishing old blogs can increase website traffic more than 100% [44]

📱 Mobile SEO stats 📱

  • 60% of all searches are done on mobile devices [54]
  • 80% of “near me” searches came from mobile devices [20]
  • Mobile searches generated 73 billion calls in 2018 [22]
  • 50% of mobile users prefer to search via a mobile browser than use a mobile app [41]
  • Pages that are not optimized for mobile have dropped in search engine rankings by 21% [55]
  • 60% of Google searches are done on mobile devices [56]
mobile seo stats
  • Google captures 95% of the mobile search market in the United States [57]
  • 65% of clicks on paid Google searches come from mobile devices [56]
  • The first organic mobile listing gets 27.7% of clicks [47]
  • 50% of “near me” mobile Google searches result in a store visit [58]
  • 42% of brand interactions on mobile devices start with a Google search [59]
  • Mobile searches for “what to get” grew by 50% from 2016-2018 [60]
  • Mobile searches for shopping lists grew by 150% from 2016-2018 [60]
  • 60% of smartphone users say they’ve found at least one new product or service through Google searches conducted on their phones [60]
  • 61% of mobile users are more likely to get in touch with a local business if they have a mobile-friendly site [62]
  • It takes as much as 15 seconds on average for mobile websites to load [72]

🏎️ Stats on site speed and site performance vs SEO 🏎️

  • Pages that load faster rank significantly higher those that load slower [44]
  • Almost universally, a faster page will outrank you every time [44]
  • Bounce rates increase by 50% if your website takes even two extra seconds to load [63]
  • Conversion rates drop by 12% for every second a website takes to load after the first three [63]
  • A one-second delay in load times could result in a ~20-30% reduction in conversions [71]

🎤 Voice search SEO stats 🎤

  • Half of all online searches will be voice searches by 2020 [64]
  • Roughly 30% of all searches will be done without a screen by 2020 [65]
  • 55% of households are expected to have smart speaker devices by 2022 [66]
  • 71% of people who own wearable devices expect to use the voice search capabilities more in the future [67]
  • Almost 20% of all voice searches begin with a set of 25 trigger words, mostly question words like “what” or “how” [68]
  • Mobile voice-related searches are 3X more likely to be local-based than text-related searches on mobile devices [69]

Don’t forget to join our crash course on speeding up your WordPress site. With some simple fixes, you can reduce your loading time by even 50-80%:

 

Written by Dianna Gunn and Karol K. Layout and presentation by Karol K.

Sources
[1] https://www.bluecorona.com/blog/2017-seo-statistics/
[2] https://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/
[3] https://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/
[4] https://ahrefs.com/blog/top-google-searches/
[5] https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-bings-us-market-share-is-wildly-underestimat-1798053061
[6] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/
[7] https://trends.google.com/trends/yis/2018/US/
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[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_(search_engine)
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[12] https://searchengineland.com/forecast-says-seo-related-spending-will-worth-80-billion-2020-247712
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[32] https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/local-seo-stats
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Karol K
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