Zero click trend is increasing: two out of three searches end on Google
Throughout 2020 nearly 65 percent of searches on Google ended on the same page as search results without even a click on another web property. The so-called zero-clicks trend on Google, or the phenomenon of searches with no clicks that therefore do not bring traffic to the sites, even though their pages have a high ranking in SERP, is confirmed.
The study on the zero-click trend in 2020
Providing the new data is the latest work of Rand Fishkin with Sparktoro, author of the previous monitoring, which explains that he analyzed a sample of 5.1 trillion searches on Google in 2020 through Similarweb.
And so, what strikes me is that “from January to December 2020, 64.82% of searches on Google (desktop and mobile combined) ended in search results without clicking on another web property“, and this number probably “underestimates some cell phone searches and almost all voice searches, and it is therefore likely that more than two-thirds of all Google searches are zero-click searches“.
Data are increasing compared to 2019
As mentioned, Fishkin had already published a similar analysis in the summer of 2019, later defining Google as the competitor of all sites precisely for this continuous erosion of clicks at the expense of the pages positioned.
That study – run through Jumpshot, clickstream data providers that then ceased activity – had shown that 50.33 percent of all Google searches ended without a click to any web properties in the results, and so in just under 18 months the trend became even more pronounced.
However, explains the SEO expert, the results of the two searches are not perfectly overlapping “because the clickstream data panel of Similarweb is different from that of Jumpshot”: for example, in the new study data come from all over the world, while with Jumpshot they were only related to the United States of Jumpshot; in addition, Similarweb combines mobile and desktop devices, including Apple /iOS devices, for which Jumpshot had no coverage.
However, Fishkin says that it is likely that “if the previous panel were still available, it would show a similar trend for Google&rsqu