Let’s just say that this article on “search statistics” is not the first. However, a quick glance at the top results won’t provide you with what you need. Here we are discussing about Organic Vs Paid Search Statistics to gain knowledge about how to maximize outreach and leverage.
There will be posts about organic search statistics and resources that cover PPC statistics. You can also find a walkthrough on how to create an SEO strategy.
Paid Vs Organic Search statistics
These articles won’t give you a complete understanding of paid and organic search. They will only provide you with the most current numbers and practical ways to use them in your business strategy.
This article will help you do exactly that.
It’s all covered in the next sections.
Statistics on organic searches
1. Google processes approximately 70,000 search queries every second.
2. Organic search accounts for 53% of all website traffic.
3. Nearly a third (33%) of consumers look for local businesses every day.
4. More than 99% of searchers click one of the links within the first SERP.
5. Search engines drive more traffic to websites than social media.
6. The first result on a Google SERP has a 28.5% click-through rate. The CTR drops to 2.5% by the 10th result.
7. A search with at least four words has a higher chance of bringing your business clicks, especially if it’s not in the top spot. Four-word keywords in the fifth position, for example, have a CTR over twice as high as one-word keywords.
8. 95.88% Google searches contain at least four words
9. Google holds 96% of all mobile search results and 92% for desktop searches.
10. Bing is the second-largest US search engine and controls 3.9% of all overall searches as well as 1.4% of mobile searches.
11. 49% believe that organic search is the most lucrative channel for marketers.
12. 67% of content marketers believe SEO is the most effective tactic.
13. 73% of content marketers use an SEO tool.
14. 49% of shoppers use Google for finding new products or items.
15. 27% of the global online population uses voice search.
16. According to estimates, 75% of households will have a smart speaker by 2025.
17. Search is the second and third most frequent use case of smart speakers, after music.
18. 16.-20% of all search queries trigger Google’s answerbox.
19. Ranking one spot higher correlates with a 3-second increase in “time spent on site”.
20. The top-ranking website has an average of 3.8 times more backlinks than positions #2-#10.
21. 1 447 words is the average Google first page result.
22. Rich results have a 58% CTR, compared to 41% for non-rich results.
Section sources:
- Hubspot
- Brightedge
- Statista
- Search Engine Journal
- SEMRush
- ThinkwithGoogle
- Google APIs
- Voicebot.ai
- SEOClarity
- Backlinko
Search mobile organically
23. 2017. This was the first year that the majority of searches were made via a mobile device.
24. 83% of US shoppers shop online before visiting a store.
25. Mobile devices account for 56% in organic search engine visits.
26. 72.6% of internet users will access the web exclusively via their smartphones by 2025.
27. 53% of shoppers would search for deals on their mobile devices before speaking with an employee.
28. Mobile pages take 87.84% more time to load than desktop.
29. 45% of consumers abandon any piece of content displaying poorly on the device they are using.
Section sources:
Case study on organic search
Backlinko.
We would normally choose a less-known case study to illustrate how businesses like yours can rank in organic search results.
But the fact of the matter is that Brian Dean’s case study covering on-page site optimization offers actionable takeaways for any business, and it’s a powerful example of how search engine optimization can drive serious traffic.
He had written a post (an SEO check-list), but it was not performing. He focused on two major changes to improve the post.
User intent should be addressed:
Brian was creating a checklist post but had not formatted his content to correspond with the title.
He was focusing on people who want a checklist. So why was his post called “Case Study”?
Google is very smart when it comes matching user intent with relevant content. This is why it is important to give your potential readers exactly what they are looking for.
He also changed the content to be more inclusive, because people searching for a checklist are unlikely to be advanced SEO experts.
Optimize for user experience:
- To help readers navigate through his post, he added a table to contents.
- He added video (which has shown to increase time-on-page).
- Because he knew that long introductions can increase bounce rates, he shortened his introduction.
- To better organize the pages content, he increased the number and added subheadings.
These strategies allowed Backlinko to increase traffic by 652%.
Similar reading
Our “What is SEO Guide” provides a comprehensive guide to SEO. For an ecommerce guide to search engine optimization, see “E-Commerce SEO Best practices.”
Paid search statistics
30. Paid search accounts for 27% of all website traffic.
31. In 2020, Google’s ad revenue amounted to $146.92 billion US dollars.
32 Advertising is responsible for 81% of Google’s total revenue.
33. By 2024, advertisers are expected to spend $99.22 trillion annually on search.
34 Google Shopping Ads has an average CTR of 0.86%.
35 Bing Shopping Ads has an average CTR of 1.25%.
36. The average return on ad spend (ROAS) for branded ads is twice as high as non-brand in most industries.
37. On average, people see between 6,000 and 10,000 ads per day.
38. Over 90% of internet users are connected to the Google Display Network.
39. Google Ads are displayed on more than 650,000 apps
40. Every minute, YouTube uploads 500+ hours worth of content.
41 Facebook ads have an average CTR of 0.89%.
42. CMOs anticipate spending more on paid search in 2021, 66%
Industry statistics on paid search
43. The average click-through-rate is 3.17%.
44. At 6.05%, the highest CTR can be found in the dating industry.
45. At 2.09%, the technology industry has the lowest CTR.
46. Average cost per click is $2.69
47. At $6.75, the legal industry has the highest CPC.
48. At $1.16, the e-commerce sector has the lowest CPC.
49. The average conversion rate for the Google Ads search network was 4.4%.
50. At 7.98%, the highest conversion rate is found in vehicle manufacturing.
51. At 2.77%, the apparel industry has the lowest conversion rate.
52. The average cost per conversion is $56.11 on the Google Ads search network and $90.80 on the display network.
53. The electronics and computers industry has the highest conversion cost at $101.40.
54. The auto industry has the lowest conversion cost at $26.17
Section sources:
- Brightedge
- Statista
- Influence Marketing Hub
- Wordstream
- Search Engine Land
- PPC Protect
- YouTube
- Gartner
Mobile statistics:
55. Mobile devices account for 71.5%. Only 27.4% clicks on Microsoft Advertising are from mobile devices.
56. The best conversion rate for online shoppers shopping on tablets is 3.32%. Similar rates of conversion are seen for smartphone (2.01%) and desktop (2.1%).
57. At 5.36%, the travel industry had the highest CTR mobile search ads.
58. Mobile search ads had a 3.06% CTR. This was the Internet and Telecom sector.
Section sources:
Statistics on organic vs. paid searches
Arguments in favor of organic search
59. 53% of website traffic comes from organic search, and 27% come from paid search.
60. Technology and B2B companies make twice the revenue through organic search than other channels.
61. Aproximately 25% of internet users use ad blocking software.
62. 11% of search engine clicks are invalid or fraudulent.
Arguments in favor of paid search
63. 74% of brands believe that PPC ads are a major driver for their business.
64. Even with a healthy SEO budget, it’s extremely rare to see organic traffic increases within the first three months of optimization.
65. 75% of search ads users say that the ads make it easier for them to find what they are looking for.
66. 93% of marketers invest in search ads.
Section sources:
Case study: Organic vs. Paid Search
It can be extremely difficult to find good paid search case studies, as most of them are built by PPC agencies who want to guard their strategies carefully, or by Google themselves.
Their case studies are from Fiat, Intel and Washington Wizards.
None of these are relevant to your small business.
So we dug a little deeper. Together with less than.5% other searchers, we reached the fourth page in Google’s search results.
Take a deep breath!
We found Digital-Advertisers.com.
They are (as you might expect) a PPC agency, but their reporting is legitimate and valuable.
The campaign was centered around. Whether your business should submit a bid for your brand name.
This is the core of the organic vs. paid search conversation.
These are their findings.
- Bidding on your brand name will increase the amount of real estate you have on the SERP.
If you search for “Unbounce”, their paid search ad and organic result mean they have control over everything above the fold. This means that there is no way for “Unbounce Competitor” pages or “Unbounce vs. (Competitor)” pages to rank higher than the fold.
- Your brand name can be bid on very cheaply as your quality score will be high.
Your brand name may be being bid on by your competitors (usually with a page titled “Why [Your Brand] isn’t as Good As [Their Brand]”)
Your search ad will be displayed above theirs and you’ll receive a cheaper PPC because of your quality score.
These are the results
We have conducted a test to remove brand search ads from a client for two weeks: one week without and one with them.
“During the one-week period before shutting it down, the campaign achieved $1,268 daily revenue, while organic searches with the brand name included resulted in a magnificent result of $241 daily.
After removing brand campaigns from Google Adwords in week 2, organic results saw a dramatic increase to $757 per day. This shows that paid ads can actually reduce organic results.
However, when we looked at the entire picture, we saw the ugly truth. This huge improvement could not completely replace the performance of the paid channel.
[…] With no brand ads in Adwords, a loss $750 per day [meant] 50% lower revenue for the client. ]”
This is the benefit of search ads even though you rank organically.
Relevant tools for organic and paid searches
- Ahrefs and SEMRush or Moz are powerful tools that provide insight into which keywords to target in both SEO strategy as well as paid search strategy.
- SpyFu: SpyFu gives you insight into the strategies of your competitors, both for PPC and SEO.
- Google Trends & Keyword Planner: These free tools are essential for every organic search optimizer as well as every PPC expert.
- These tools give you an insight into the competition, cost, likelihood, and probability that your brand will rank for each search term.
- Wishpond, Instapage or Unbounce: To make paid search ads work, you must send people to landing pages. It’s easy with these three landing page providers.
- Optimizely, VWO or Google Optimize: A good A/B testing tool can make a huge difference in optimizing your website for paid traffic.
- Woopra Or Mixpanel Analytics are essential to any marketing or advertising strategy. These tools are industry leaders in buyer path tracking, an important part of determining the success and ROI of your paid or organic search strategy.
Conclusion
These organic and paid search statistics should give you an understanding of the power of search.
We also hope that you will now see that organic and paid search are not inherently superior.
While PPC does have a cost, your business should be trying and testing both (with organic search optimization, you’ll have to test for at least six months, by the way).
You can try them all and find out which one works best for your business. If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask the experts.
Does paid traffic increase organic traffic?
So in this circuitous sense – yes – using Google Ads will augment the rankings of your organic listings. And that, in rotate, will amplify how a lot organic traffic your site gets from Google. Paid search does assist organic search results.
What are the advantages of getting organic traffic?
Why is organic traffic significant? Organic traffic is imperative because it is embattled. Users visiting your website from a search engine’s organic results have an extremely explicit intent and if you can offer them with a resolution or answer to their question, they are further probable to alter.
What is the difference between paid and organic searches?
Paid search is a brand of contextual advertising where site owners pay a charge to have their site revealed in peak search engine results page placement. Organic Search results emerge in the focal point of the page. Paid Search results materialize at the peak of web page. … By paying large amount, site can be ranked on zenith rapidly.
What is the difference between direct traffic and organic traffic?
Types of Traffic Sources : Direct Traffic — As we mentioned, direct traffic is categorized as traffic that does not arrive from a referring website. … Organic Traffic — Organic traffic is several traffic that comes to your website from a search engine, but that isn’t paid for.
Is direct traffic good?
Appraisal the landing pages of your Direct Traffic is a fine suggestion of what is rightful. Traffic that lands straight on the homepage is probable factual direct traffic because that is what users are mainly expected to form into a browser. Direct traffic to further URLs with short page paths may also be lawful traffic.
Why is paid traffic better?
Paid search is further precious but when through suitably, it results in instant visibility, and this visibility (targeted impressions) results in clicks, which equals quicker priceless traffic.
Why is organic better than paid?
You also offer yourself the possibility to receive these leads and sales without paying for them. Instead of clicking on your paid ads, users could discover you geologically fairly than through paid search. This benefit would tender you the likelihood to forward your ad splurge to another campaign or ad group.