Image: Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash
A new study by Rand Fishkin of Spark Toro has identified the number of Google searches which end without a click. The study used clickstream data from Datos, which is owned by Semrush, and provides a fresh insight into search behaviour on Google and the evolution of search.
Zero clicks
The study found that 58.5% of searches in the US and 59.7% in the EU end in a zero-click. This means the user did not click on any of the results served, and either ended their session or went on to enter a new search query.
Zero-clicks reflect an evolving trend in user behaviour. Not everyone who enters a search on Google wants or needs to click through to a website. Sometimes people are looking for quick answers, such as a store opening time, and these can be provided by a variety of answer formats on the results page.
People also refine their queries without clicking through, or search on the same keyword multiple times. As Rand Fishkin points out, user search behavior is “diverse, unexpected, and messy… i.e. they’re human”.
If you want to check zero-click data for your search terms, it’s one of the metrics provided by Wordtracker in our keyword research tool.
Traffic to Google properties and to open web
Google is very successful at keeping searchers within their ecosystem.
28.5% of all clicks in the US go to a Google property such as YouTube, Google Images, Google Maps, Google Flights, Google Hotels, the Google App Store and more. For every 1,000 Google searches in the US, 360 clicks go to the open web.
For the EU the figure is slightly lower. 24% of all clicks go to a Google property; for every 1,000 Google searches, 374 clicks go to the open web.
This may indicate that EU antitrust regulatory measures in the form of the Digital Markets Act are having some effect, though the difference is not dramatic.
The study reports that the overall trend in clickthroughs to the open web is negative, with both the EU and the US at historic lows. Google is sending a decreasing share of its search pie to the web. The redeeming factor is that because the search pie is growing, the amount of traffic Google refers to the open web overall remains “relatively stable”.
The study also found that almost half of mobile searches in both the US and the EU end the browsing session completely. The desktop figure was around half of this.
Overall, around 22% of searches result in another search.
The data comes from Datos’ US and EU panel and represents “a diverse and statistically significant sample of users” between Sep 2022 and May 2024. No data is perfect and a number of caveats and limitations are noted in the report, but its findings highlight significant trends in the ongoing development of search and user behaviour.
Read the whole study on the SparkToro blog.
