The Results Are In: What Marketers Should Know About Google’s Search Results

Just as Google was unveiling its AI Overviews search tool in May — and right before OpenAI’s announcement of a competing generative search tool of its own — SparkToro was concluding a near two-year study of Google’s search results. Using Datos-provided clickstream data, the study looked to figure out the most likely outcomes for searches.

(Source: SparkToro)

More than half (58.5%) of Google results in the U.S. end without even a click.

“[A aero-click search] includes searches that end with the searcher satisfied, frustrated, or changing their search to perform a new one,” writes Rand Fishkin, SparkToro’s co-founder. “We’re almost certainly under-counting the ‘zero-click search’ problem because this data does not account for use of voice-answered searches through Google Assistant, or searches done in the Google mobile search app (which, while similar to in-browser results, features even more rich answer results).”

For the 41.5% of searches that result in a click, 1% go to a paid ad while 70.5% go to an organic, unpaid result. Fishkin says that what happens to the remaining 28.5% is as troubling as the zero-click problem.

“Equally concerning, especially for those worried about Google’s monopoly power to self-preference their own properties in the results, is that almost 30% of all clicks go to platforms Google owns,” writes Fishkin. “YouTube, Google Images, Google Maps, Google Flights, Google Hotels, the Google App Store, and dozens more means that Google gets even more monetization and sector-dominating power from their search engine.”

Fishkin says for every 1,000 Google searches, 360 make it to the open web. (In Europe, that number rises slightly to 374.) That means nearly two-thirds stay within that Google ecosystem.

“For marketers, this underscores the importance of zero-click content: getting value from searches that don’t result in a click,” Fishkin writes. “For those concerned about Google’s monopoly power, it suggests that efforts thus far haven’t done much to curb the search giant’s power.”

In accounting for AI Overviews introduction in May 2024, Fishkin says the notable differences were a slight rise in desktop searches and a considerable fall in mobile searches, a dip that Fishkin says “would scare the stock-price-worshiping-crap outta me” if he were running Google.

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