In 2024, Nearly 60% Of Google Searches End Without a Click

Most Google searches, specifically 58.5% in the U.S. and 59.7% in the EU, do not lead to any clicks. A zero-click search occurs when users either end their session or initiate a new query without selecting any results.

This information is from a new zero-click search study conducted by Rand Fishkin, the CEO and co-founder of SparkToro, using clickstream data from Datos, a company owned by Semrush.

Why this matters

Clicks influence Google Search rankings, as confirmed during the Google antitrust trial and supported by findings from the Google Search leak. It’s essential to recognize that not all users seek to click on a link to obtain their answers. 

Additionally, many zero-click searchers might not have been your target audience, as noted by technical SEO consultant Pedro Dias on X.

Additional insights from the study

Clicks to Google properties. According to the report, nearly 30% of all clicks in the U.S. direct to Google-owned platforms (e.g., YouTube, Google Images, Google Maps).

A few considerations

Clicking on YouTube directs users to videos created by businesses, brands, or creators. For searches with local intent, if someone seeks directions to a business, the fact that they didn’t visit the website might not be significant.

While Google retaining users within its ecosystem might be a concern, it’s less so if you’re optimizing beyond Classic Search and searchers are finding what they need. The concern escalates when Google enters new sectors, dominating and leaving websites with minimal organic search traffic.

• Exploring further. SEOs need to optimize for seven platforms beyond Google.
• Traffic to websites. For every 1,000 Google searches, 360 clicks in the U.S. go to the open web; in the EU, this figure is 374. 

Although the exact number of daily Google searches is uncertain, estimates suggest 8.5 billion searches daily. This implies over 3 billion clicks per day go to the open web in the U.S., far surpassing any other search or answer engine.

• AI Overviews. Desktop searches slightly increased while mobile searches significantly declined from May compared to the prior four months. This trend coincides with Google’s introduction of AI Overviews in May, which was soon followed by instances of incorrect and dangerous answers from AIO, prompting Google to promise improvements.
• Google asserts that AI Overviews (formerly Search Generative Experience) increased search usage, though it has not provided concrete data to support this claim.
• Data specifics. The data was gathered by Datos’ U.S. & EU panel from September 2022 to May 2024, representing a statistically significant and diverse user sample. 

While the data has limitations and caveats, it offers insights into the changing behavior of searchers as Google transitions from a search engine to an answer engine.

Reference: Nearly 60% of Google searches end without a click in 2024