We already know how many Google searches end up staying on Google. Too many.

In recent years we have seen how searching on Google has become more and more controversial. The company has been taking steps that have locked us more and more into the search engine and caused something unusual: we have been clicking less and less on the results.

This trend has been growing and changing, and a study has just shown that Google is still as strong as ever in the search world —perhaps even more so— and that the way they do things is increasingly worrying.

The study comes from Sparktorowhich thanks to the collaboration of the company Data —part of Semrush— has managed to take a very striking picture of how Google searches are today. Let’s take a look at those conclusions.

60% of searches end with zero clicks

The first big takeaway from this study is that Google has made it so that we don’t need to click on results because the results page already shows the information we need.

Six out of ten searches end with zero clicks in both the US and Europe. Bad news for content providers. Source: SparkToro.

Here, things like snippets that summarize original content have worked wonders for Google and users, who certainly save those clicks to get answers to their questions.

That, of course, is not good news for those who generated that content and those responses in the first place. The web lives off of advertising, so if you don’t visit the original web page of the content, they (usually) don’t make any money. Google remains a key source of traffic for the vast majority of websites, but the search engine is merciless: it drives less and less traffic to those sites.

This is demonstrated by the data from the study, which reveal that almost Six out of ten searches end with zero clicks. That is to say, either the user has already seen the answer in the search engine and does not click on the result (37% of cases), or is not happy with the results and does another search (22%). The study shows some differences between the behaviour of users in the USA and in Europe, but these differences are minimal.

The data also reveals something equally striking: Google is using its search engine to push its own services. In other words, if the search engine can redirect you to one of Google’s platforms (Maps, Google Flights, the App Store), it will do so.

In fact, of those four out of ten searches that do end in a click, One in four leads to a Google serviceSpecifically, 28.5% in the US and 24% in Europe. An absolute nonsense that logically makes these platforms and the company’s own ecosystem stronger.

You know what we know. He who divides and shares gets the best part.

AI is not a threat to search engines (yet)

The other major conclusion of the study is equally compelling. It doesn’t matter if there are people who believe that Google search engine is dyingCriticism has been growing lately and many claim that they no longer search on Google because it is broken or they do so using the tag of searching directly with the term “reddit” at the end.

There are fewer and fewer clicks to the “Open Web”, that is, to content providers other than Google. Like Xataka, for example. Argh. Source: SparkToro.

And yet according to the study “Google is not taking any risks losing market share, total searches or searches per search engine. In all these metrics they are, in fact, stronger than ever.”

There is also the threat of ChatGPT and other chatbots that seem to offer an increasingly real alternative. The question, of course, is whether there is any truth in all this. How does AI affect the search engine?

AI Overviews are AI-generated results that appear above traditional sponsored and organic results. They are like “supercharged snippets” and seem to point to a future in which we will see more and more of this.

The study’s answer is based on the analysis of how the new “AI Overviews” of the Google search engine have impacted its operation. As you know, this new option makes AI-generated results appear on the search engine’s results page, although it is best not to rely too much on them for now.

The introduction of AI Overviews appears to have had an impact on the US mobile search engine (May, light blue bar). Worried? It’s too early to tell. Source: SparkToro.

According to SparkToro data, there was a noticeable impact on the mobile search engine in the US in May, when AI Overviews came into play. It was in that country that the option debuted, and the truth is that mobile searches represent 2/3 of the total, so Google should perhaps be worried.

For SparkToro experts, however, the difference with May in Europe is curious, but not significant despite the concern that this seems to generate in the company led by Sundar Pichai.

SparkToro’s conclusion is that “Both the fear of AI summaries and the “death of Google search quality” They are essentially much ado about nothingwhich mean nothing. Or at least not much.”

The data therefore seems to show that neither the AI ​​revolution nor the criticism of its search engine are leading to a change in Google, which in fact seems to be emerging stronger from all these problems. In short, it is another day at the office for Google.

Image | Wolvezar with Midjourney

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