Starting off with the search engine giant itself – buckle in, dear readers, as there has been a lot going on.
Firstly, according to a SimilarWeb study, between January and December of 2020, nearly 65% of Google searches resulted in no clicks to another website.
This is almost two thirds of every single Google search, then, resulting in no traffic for websites or ads.
That seems astounding. The researchers suggest that this could rise as we get back out and about and use our mobiles, rather than desktops, for searches.
However, in response, Google has come out and disputed this data by providing context. This could be because people are searching for a quick fact like the weather, which Google has a licence to display, a business or phone number or comparing flights or other transport options with Google’s own platforms, or going straight from the SERPs to an app.
They say that local results in Search still drive business even though users do not have to click on the website, indeed, many of these businesses might not have a website at all.
The search engine also shared some data in order to protest against the claim that it’s taking business away from users. They say local results in Search drive more than 4 billion connections for businesses every month – including phone calls, food orders, reservations and directions.
Through this, they connect 120 million businesses that do not have a website with customers.
They also argued that traffic to the web has only increased since Google Search was created, although this seems a little hard to dispute, because, obviously traffic to the web has increased as populations and web-users increase.
This content was originally published here.