Zero-click searches, Google replies to the study
Less than 24 hours: this was the (little) time Google needed to reply to the results of Rand Fishkin’s study on the zero-click trend in Search in 2020, of which we have given news in recent days. And as we already noted in our piece, the focal point on which Danny Sullivan invites to reflecton behalf of the American group concerns the actual validity of the data analyzed by Sparktoro and Similarweb, which “are based on an imperfect methodology that misunderstands the way people use research”.
Google replies to the study on clickless searches
Thus writes the Public Liaison for Search in the post published on The Keyword, which wants to “provide an important context on misleading claims” present in the research – that, Moreover, it has also continued to generate negative criticism from the international SEO community.
And Sullivan starts right from the surveys highlighted by “research professionals” to the thesis of Fishkin – summarized in Google steals clicks to sites because “most searches on Google ends without anyone clicking on another site”, a trend that has been called zero-click searches – to challenge and resize it because it results from an imperfect methodology.
In fact, the Googler replies, “Google Search sends billions of clicks to websites every day and since Google was first created we have sent more traffic every year to the open Web“, and also “we connect people with companies in a wide variety of ways through Research, for example by allowing a direct phone call”.
How people use Search today
Sullivan’s goal is to contradict SparkToro’s arguments with facts that clarify the situation and provide a relevant background to the misleading allegations of the study, analyzing the actual context of today’s searches and therefore the different ways compared to the past in which people use Google, which can lead to search queries that require an immediate response and do not require a click.
Today, in fact, “people use Search to find a wide range of information and Google Search sends someone to a website billions of times a day”; so although not all queries return a click on a site “there are many very good reasons why this happens“, as exemplified in the following four cases (not adequately considered by Fishkin, implies even too covertly Sullivan, in certifying that “only 35% of research in 2020 led to a click”).
- People reformulate their questions
When they start the search, people do not always know how to formulate their questions: they could “start with a broad search, such as sneakers and, after examining the results, realize that they actually wanted to find black sneakers“.
In this case, says Google, such searches “would be considered as zero-click because they do not immediately produce a click on a site”. In the case of the purchase of sneakers, some zero-click searches may be required to get to the goal, but “If someone eventually ends up on a retailer’s site and makes a purchase, Google has brought that site a qualified visitor, less likely to come back unsatisfied”.
According to Sullivan, this situation happens frequently and, therefore, Google offers many features (such as “related searches”) “to help people formulate their searches and get the most useful result, which is often found on a site”.
- People search for quick facts
People look for “quick and concrete information, such as weather forecast, sports results, currency conversions, time in different places and more”. Today Google – “like many search engines”, th