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from the got-what-they-were-looking-for-from-search-results-page? dept.
A few months ago, back in August, the Web passed a milestone in that less than half of Google searches result in even a single click onwards. In other words, the majority of searchers never left Google after seeing the results. That could be a warning that Google is transitioning from a search engine to more of a walled-garden. Or it could mean that the results aren't good any more and people move on to other engines after only a quick glance. If the former, where searches are no longer resulting in click through, then what should be the proper response from the Web at large?
From: Less than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click:
On desktop, things haven’t changed all that much in the last three years. Organic is down a few percent, paid and zero-click are up a bit, but June of 2019 isn’t far off January of 2016.
On mobile, where more than half of all searches take place, it’s a different story. Organic has fallen by almost 20%, while paid has nearly tripled and zero-click searches are up significantly. Even way back in January 2016, more than half of mobile searches ended without a click. Today’s, it’s almost 2/3rds.
Three trends are made clear by these numbers:
- The percent of searches available as organic traffic from Google is steadily declining, especially on mobile.
- Paid clicks tend to increase whenever Google makes changes to how those results are displayed, then slowly decline as searchers get more familiar with spotting and avoiding them.
- Google’s ongoing attempts to answer more searches without a click to any results OR a click to Google’s own properties are both proving successful. As a result, zero-click searches, and clicks that bring searchers to a Google-owned site keep rising.
And, from: Over 50% of Google searches result in no clicks, data shows:
Even worse, it seems this trend towards zero-click searches has seen steady growth since 2016. In the meantime, organic reach for third-party websites has continued to shrink. To be fair, it's not all that surprising that a large number of searches result in no clicks – especially when we factor in that Google has been shifting its attention to summing up results in snippets at the top of Search. While those might be easier to scan for users, they do eat into third-party websites' traffic. We've reached out to Google for comment, but have yet to hear back. We'll update this post accordingly, if we do. However, as Fishkin points out, a US congressional panel recently asked Google if it was true that less than 50 percent of searches lead to non-Google websites. It was a simple Yes-No question, but the Big G eschewed giving a direct response. Instead, it took a dig at the authenticity of the data cited – without denying it.
Previously:
Google Removes Image Search Buttons to Appease Getty Images (2018)
Google Kills Off Search-As-You-Type (2017)
HTTPS Introduced as Google Search Ranking Criterion (2014)
Google Downranking The Pirate Bay Searches (2014)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Sunday October 27 2019, @05:34AM (6 children)
Your use-cases are not my use-cases.
The efficacy of today's Google search depends on what you are actually searching for. Here is one example: If you search for web pages or articles published more than a few years ago, you will have a hell of a time finding them even if you can recall the name of the author or the exact title. They are effectively gone from Google's perspective, and thus out of your reach. They even said as much five or so years back. In those cases, cross-searchers like DDG and Startpage and, maybe, Yandex.
Another example is that searching for numbers is all but impossible now and pattern searching was removed at least a decade ago from Google.
Then take the case of looking for project home pages for specific software packages. If the project is noteworthy enough, is usually easier and faster to find the project home page via Wikipedia than to waste effort and time dorking around with Google. AltaVista used to be best at that. However, it is gone and the market narrows.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @06:43AM (1 child)
I think that Google is, and has been for some time, transitioning to an "answer engine" instead of a search engine. Probably one of the best known ones for some time was Ask Jeeves, where you could ask it certain questions and it would answer it on top, with search being a secondary function. However, Ask Jeeves and many other answer engines learned that users of such services do not click ads. They expect to see the answer up top and are then satisfied, otherwise they will try another query, another service (like Wikipedia or a search engine), or give up to try "later." This is exacerbated by people doing quick lookups while on mobile because if they don't find what they are looking for, many will just give up and continue the conversation they were having that prompted that query in the first place. By cultivating such an answer engine, Google is hurting their click rate and search results for non-question queries.
As an aside, if you are looking for articles, you should try Google Scholar or another dedicated article search engine for the type of article you are looking for.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday October 27 2019, @07:25AM
I agree. It is a dangerous thing to do because people have less incentive being indexed, but google is turning into an assistant.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Walzmyn on Sunday October 27 2019, @11:41AM (3 children)
yeah.
But for every one case like yours how many hundred are just looking for the time of the Packers game or how many inches in a meter, which are all right on the Google results page? That's the source of the decline mentioned in TFA.
Although your use case may prove Google is becoming useless, it's not what's driving this.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday October 27 2019, @01:08PM (1 child)
I don't know. It could be both. Some people google just the weather one time and then get on the bus to go to work while a programmer hammers Google relentlessly. Without seeing IP Addresses (or other uniquely identifying information) it's hard to tell.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 27 2019, @07:55PM
And any decent statistical method will strip out the OCD programmers who read page 10 of their search results as anomalous outliers...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday October 27 2019, @04:41PM
I'll use it to check the spelling of a word.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek