SEO Statistics

On average, the typical internet user searches Google 4 times a day. With 7 billion daily searches, around 1.7 billion people use Google daily.

49% of marketers report that organic search provides the best ROI of any marketing channel. 

Featured snippets have the highest clickthrough rate (CTR) at 42.9%.

91% of respondents reported that SEO positively impacted website performance and marketing goals in 2024.

Video accounts for 82% of all internet traffic. YouTube is the second largest search engine, making video SEO essential.

96% of internet users, or 4.97 billion people, access the web through mobile devices. 

Google organic search is responsible for 57.8% of the world’s web traffic.

Here are the key metrics highlighting the current state of technical SEO implementation across websites:

Website Security & Structure:

• HTTPS Implementation: 87.7% of websites use HTTPS
• Structured Data: 23% of websites lack structured data implementation
• Title Tags: 7.4% of top 10 ranking pages missing title tags

Google Behavior:

• Title Display: Google rewrites 61% of titles in search results

Link Health:

• Broken Links: 66% of backlinks are non-functional

Organic search results account for 45.1% of all clicks, while zero-click searches make up 25.6%.

88% of consumers who perform a local business search visit or call a listed store within 24 hours.

36% of Americans aged 12 and older own a smart speaker.

52.65% of Google searches are informational, 32.15% are navigational, 14.51% are commercial, and 0.69% are transactional. 

More than 44% of Google searches involve branded terms.

There are over 99,000 searches on Google every second.

Video is 53 times more likely to generate organic search rankings compared to plain text. 

In the U.S., users spend an average of 52 minutes a day watching videos, with that number expected to rise to 57 minutes by 2028.

Over 80% of search queries in the U.S. are 1-3 words long.

72% of marketers believe publishing high-quality content is the most effective SEO tactic.

75% of users never go past the first page of search results.

Businesses that spend $4,000 or more per article are more likely to report content marketing success than those spending $500 or less.

In the U.S., 21% of consumers use the internet daily to find local businesses, 32% search a few times a week, and only 2% never search for local businesses online. 

Pages in the top 10 Google search results have 50% lower keyword density than those that ranked two years ago.

Backlinks are still important for ranking, but they are no longer in the top three ranking factors.

Content over 3,000 words attracts three times more traffic than average-length content of 1,400 words. It also receives four times more shares and 3.5 times more backlinks.

Organic search results on page 1 of Google have an average of 1,447 words. 

49% of U.S. consumers begin their search when shopping online with a search engine like Google.

Here are the key SEO market and industry statistics and trends:

• Global Market & Growth: The SEO market was valued at $82.3 billion in 2023, with projections reaching $143.9 billion by 2030 at an 8.3% annual growth rate
• Search Advertising: Expected to reach $483.5 billion by 2029, with an 8.86% annual growth rate from 2024 to 2029
• Market Dominance: Google maintains 91.54% of the global search engine market share in 2023

Leading Companies Revenue

• Semrush Holdings: $1.74 billion market cap, with 23.5% quarterly revenue growth and over $357 million revenue in the last 12 months
• Ahrefs: Surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue in 2023

According to the Glassdoor data, the median salary for an SEO specialist in the U.S. is around $69.8k per year. 

Nearly 60% of pages ranking in the top 10 Google results are three or more years old. 

Here are the key metrics showcasing how consumers interact with local businesses through search engines:

Search Behavior:

• Local Queries: 46% of Google searches are local-focused

• Consumer Search Frequency: 21% search daily, 32% few times weekly, 2% never search

• Shopping Habits: 49% of U.S. consumers start online shopping with search engines

Consumer Actions:

• Business Response: 88% visit or call stores within 24 hours of local search

• Voice Search Impact: Local queries 3x more common in voice vs text searches

41% of American adults use voice search on a daily basis.

High-quality content, page experience, and backlinks are the top three ranking factors in Google’s search results.

On mobile, YouTube sends 4.23% of all U.S. referral traffic per visitor, compared to 2.42% from desktop.

After analyzing 10,000 Google Home search results, 40.7% of all answers from voice search are pulled from a Featured Snippet.

Unique referrals from Reddit are higher on mobile devices (7.36%) compared to desktop (5.54%). 

Voice search results contain an average of only 29 words.

Pages using Schema markup account for 36.4% of voice search results, compared to the global average of 31.3%. 

Here are the latest metrics showing the current state of mobile internet usage and its impact on SEO performance:

Global Mobile Usage:

• Internet Users: 4.97 billion people (96%) access web via mobile devices
• Search Engine Share: Google controls 95% of mobile search market
• Total Traffic Share: Mobile accounts for 59% of global internet traffic

Regional Mobile Traffic:

• Africa: 74% of total internet traffic
• Asia: 69% of total internet traffic
• South America: 56% of total internet traffic
• North America: 45% of total internet traffic

Website Optimization:

• Mobile Readiness: 80% of top-ranking websites are mobile-optimized

Google referrals come to 31.4% from mobile compared to 95.47% from desktop, while Facebook has 7.60% of referrals from mobile vs. 11.61% from desktop. 

The average Google voice search result receives 1,199 Facebook shares and 44 Tweets.

Over 66% of backlinks are broken. 

Voice search results typically load in 4.6 seconds, which is 52% faster than the average page load time.

Search advertising spending is expected to reach $483.5 billion by 2029, growing at an 8.86% annual rate from 2024 to 2029.

In August 2023, 13.5% of SEO professionals worldwide said content strategy and/or production would be their main focus for the next 12 months, with data analysis following closely behind at 10%.

7.4% of pages ranking in the top 10 of Google do not have a title tag.

Semrush Holdings has a market cap of $1.74 billion. For the quarter ending on September 30, 2024, its revenue grew by 23.5%, reaching over $357 million in the last 12 months.

Google rewrites 61% of titles displayed in its search results.

In 2024, nearly 60% of Google searches in the EU and 58% in the U.S. resulted in no clicks.

More than 1 billion voice searches are made each month.

Long-tail keywords account for 70% of all search traffic.

Over 20% of people worldwide use voice search, with 27% using it on mobile devices. 

69% of clicks go to the top 5 organic search results for any keyword.

Only 13% of marketers are using voice search optimization in their strategies.