According to a research report published earlier this month by internet marketing software company SEMRush, nearly 30% of people have to remake their Google search , either refine or expand queries. SEMRush collected data from 20,000 anonymous users, and they conducted 455,368 independent searches. Then I observed how long it took them to follow up.
For more than 70% of users, the second click time takes less than 15 seconds, which means they are likely to have found the website or answer they are looking for. However, nearly 30% of users are somehow improving, redoing, or extending their search, suggesting that for some, the answers are not effectively enumerated to the top of the page.
This 30% of the number comes from 9.7% of users participating in "Google Clicks", which means they click on the content on the image or dynamic display bar after querying. For these people, they might have really found what they are looking for. Another 17.9% of users have modified the search keywords or modified their original queries.
SEMRush found that keyword changes were more frequent on mobile phones, at 29.3%, and 17.9% on desktops. This suggests that people who need quick information may look for answers directly on Google instead of clicking into a website. Since this study does not investigate the user's experience, it is impossible to accurately say why people on mobile devices re-do or improve their search more often, and easy typos on small screens may be a culprit.
on the desktop, the study also found that 25.6% of the results were "zero clicks". This means that a person does not click a link after making a query. This could mean that users find the answer they are looking for without clicking on the website link. The latter can cause trouble for billions of websites that rely on traffic to bring advertising sales - while fewer clicks are good for those looking for quick answers, it is bad for many news and information sites that create these content.
"Google Search sends billions of clicks to the website every day, and since Google was created, we have sent more traffic to the open network every year," said Danny Sullivan, a public contact for Google Search. "It's normal for people to search without knowing what they're looking for, then refine that search after seeing the results and our refinement options (like related searches) and finally find what they need."
's complaints about the reliability of search continue to appear in online discussions and articles. From Reddit posts to Atlantic magazine articles, people say they are fighting against SEO people trying to play with Google's search engine and the company's own filtering system. Search is also still Google's most valuable product, which controls over 92% of the online search market share, helping the company drive advertising revenue.
Some users say they are now using the short video platform TikTok to find the answers they are looking for, not Google. This may be the reason why Google integrates more TikTok-like features in search, and the reason why it spent $100 million to acquire an artificial intelligence avatar startup.
Google's parent company Alphabet reported $69 billion in revenue last quarter, of which $39.5 billion came from "Google Search and Others". Even so, Google's earnings did not meet analysts' expectations.
