2022 Search Engine Optimization Statistics

Statistics help us turn data into information, allowing us to make informed and rational decisions, which is exactly what this article is about. We are big fans of search engine marketing, both organic and paid search marketing. However, with consumer behavior changing so quickly, it’s critical to stay on top of search engine marketing statistics to inform your strategy. For marketers looking to make data-driven marketing decisions, we have a variety of tools and templates available. We have resources to help you with your digital marketing optimization journey, whether you’re looking for channel excellence or marketing strategy advice.

How Many Searches Are Made Each Day?

Google processes over 3.5 billion searches per day, or 1.2 trillion searches per year, as of January 26, 2022.

SEO Stats for 2022

Here are some interesting search engine optimization statistics for 2022:

1. A search engine is the starting point for 68 percent of online experiences.

2. Google (including Google Images) currently controls 91.94 percent of the total search engine market share, followed by Bing, Yahoo!, and others. , YANDEX, and Baidu.

3. SEO and organic traffic generate more leads than any other marketing initiative, according to 61% of B2B marketers.

4. Even if the purchase is made in a store, 63 percent of all shopping begins online.

5. 70% of online marketers believe that SEO is more effective than PPC at generating sales.

6. The top page of a Google search has a click-through rate of 32% on average.

7. 75% of people never look past the first page of search results.

Local SEO Statistics for 2022

In the world of SEO in 2022, outranking national brands in search results was once nearly impossible. Fortunately, Google introduced a way for small businesses to compete with the big boys in 2014. Google released the first version of their Pigeon update in July 2014, allowing local businesses to compete for search rankings on a local level. In short, Google began to favor businesses near the searcher in location-specific searches (for example, “pizza near me,” “Denver contractors,” and so on). Check out these local SEO stats below:

• Every day, nearly one-third of all consumers in the United States use the internet to search for local businesses.
• 76 percent of people who use their mobile phone to search for a local business visit a related business within 24 hours.
• Within 24 hours, 28 percent of local searches result in a purchase.
• If a local business has a mobile-friendly website, 61 percent of mobile searchers are more likely to contact them.
• Consumers trust online reviews as much as they do personal recommendations, according to 79%.
• Google Maps is used by 86% of people to find the location of a business. 

Mobile SEO Statistics for 2022

Mobile search rankings are more important than ever and will only become more so in the future. Here are some SEO statistics for 2022:

• Mobile devices account for 55% of all global internet traffic.
• In the United States, 56 percent of all online consumers have searched for local businesses on a mobile device.
• More than half of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product while searching on their phone’s search engine.
• 51% of internet users only use their smartphones to access the internet (no desktop or laptop computer usage).
• The average American spends 5 to 6 hours per day on their phones, not including work-related phone use.
• If your mobile website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 53% of visitors will abandon it.
• Since 2017, searches containing the terms “Where to buy” and “near me” have increased by 200 percent.

Industry/Business Spending Statistics

For 2022, here are the industry and business spending statistics:

• In 2020, brands and agencies in the United States are expected to pay $79.27 billion for SEO services.
• Google’s projected net U.S. digital ad revenues by the end of 2020 are $39.58 billion, representing a 29.4 percent share of the US digital ad market. This represents a 5.3 percent decrease from Google’s 2019 revenues of $41.8 billion.
  7.2 percent: The percentage decrease in Google’s net search ad revenues in the United States for 2020.
• >$5,000: The average monthly cost of SEO for most businesses.

Local Search SEO Statistics

Here are some local SEO statistics for 2022:

• Almost one-third of all mobile searches are related to location. 
• Almost two-thirds of smartphone users are more likely to buy from companies whose mobile sites or apps tailor information to their location. 
• 76 percent: The percentage of people who search for something nearby on their smartphones and visit a business within a day. (Only 28% of searches for something nearby result in a purchase)
• Approximately 45 percent of global shoppers buy online and then pick up in-store. 
• More than 55%: The proportion of shoppers who say they used online video while shopping in a store. 
• 90%: The proportion of consumers who used the internet to find a local business in the previous year. 
• Positive reviews, according to 91 percent of consumers, make them more likely to use a business. 
• The percentage of consumers who read online reviews for local businesses is 82 percent.
• The average consumer spends 13 minutes and 45 seconds reading reviews before making a decision.
• 76 percent: The proportion of consumers who trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. 

Users and Search Behavior Statistics

Provided below are the user and search behavior statistics for 2022:

• Mobile and tablet devices are used by 52.94 percent of internet users worldwide, while desktop computers are used by 47.06 percent. 
• Since 2019, the percentage of search interest growth in “what to watch” queries has increased by 1,000%. 
• The percentage of people who use their phone in their “I want to buy” moments is 65 percent. 
• 39 percent: The proportion of buyers influenced by a relevant search. 
• 79 percent: The proportion of people who performed a relevant action on their phone before making a purchase.
  3: The average number of words used in a typical search query. 
• 8%: The proportion of search queries that are phrased as questions. 
• 18%: The percentage of Google queries that result in the searcher changing their search terms but not clicking any results.
• The percentage of searches that result in more than one click on Google’s results is 21%.
• The percentage of Google queries that result in pogo-sticking is 8%. (i.e., the searcher clicks a result, then bounces back to the search results page and chooses a different result). (Moz)
• The average number of days it takes people to make a purchase decision in 2019 is compared to 2015. (Google)

Link Building  SEO Statistics

Provided below are the SEO stats for link-building in 2022:

• The proportion of digital marketers who use content marketing specifically to generate links is 75%. 
• 1-9 links: The average number of links produced by a content marketing campaign, according to the majority of digital marketers.
• 28 percent: The proportion of digital marketers who reported creating a campaign that produced no links at all. 
• 70%: The percentage of digital marketers who use Ahrefs as a link-building tool. 
• The percentage of digital marketers who use SEMrush for link building is 51%. 
• If you could only choose one metric to measure the authority and/or quality of a link, 34 percent of digital marketers would choose Domain Authority (Moz). 
• The percentage of digital marketers who consider rankings to be the primary KPI for measuring the effectiveness of link building is 38%. 
• The percentage of digital marketers who believe that guest posting is the most effective link-building strategy is 53%. 
• Over 63 percent of digital marketers prefer to outsource their link-building activities. 
• The percentage of web pages with no backlinks is 66.31 percent. 
• The average cost of publishing a guest post is $77.80. 

Backlink Statistics

Backlinks are one of Google’s top three ranking factors, according to the company. Take a look at these link-related search engine optimization SEO statistics.

• There are no backlinks on 66.31 percent of pages.
• The majority of top-ranking pages receive ‘followed’ backlinks from new websites at a rate of +5% -14.5 percent per month.
• In general, the more backlinks a page has, the more organic traffic it receives from Google.
• The average price for a link is $361.44.
• A paid guest post costs an average of $77.80 to publish.
• 73.6 percent of domains have reciprocal links, which means that some of the sites to which they link also link back to them. 

Google Search Results Stats

These Google search results statistics may surprise you.

• 15%: The percentage of searches that Google has never seen before, out of billions of queries received each day.
• 1 billion: The total number of devices that now include Google Assistant.
• 2 trillion: The estimated number of searches handled by Google each year around the world.
• 40-60 billion: The estimated monthly number of Google searches in the United States.
• The difference between Google’s total global search engine market and Bing’s is 89 percent.
• The average Google search session lasts less than one minute (from the time of the initial query to the loading of the search results page and the selection of any results, plus any back button clicks to those SERPs and selection of new results.)
• The percentage of distinct search queries that resulted in one or more clicks on Google’s results was 66 percent. (Around 34% of searches receive no clicks at all.)
• 3.4 percent: The proportion of distinct Google search queries that resulted in a click on a Google ad (paid).
• 0.9 percent: The proportion of Google.com search results that lead to a Google Maps click.
• 0.5 percent: The percentage of Google search results clicks that go to Knowledge Graph links.
• 3 percent: The proportion of Google search results clicks that go to image blocks.
• The percentage of clicks on Google search results that lead to Twitter block results is 0.23 percent.
• 1.8 percent: The percentage of Google search results clicks that go to YouTube.
• The percentage of clicks on Google search results that lead to personalized Gmail/Google Mail results is 0.16 percent.
• The percentage of clicks on Google search results that lead to Google Shopping results is 0.55 percent.
• 11.8 percent: The proportion of clicks from unique Google searches that result in a click on a Google property, such as YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Books, the Google Play Store on mobile, and so on.
• The top 1MM queries account for approximately 25% of all searches, with the top 10MM queries accounting for approximately 45 percent and the top 1BB queries accounting for nearly 90%.
• 25%: The percentage of total search volume that occurs outside of the top 100 million keywords.
  40.9 percent: The percentage of mobile Google searches that result in an organic click, 2% in a paid click, and 57.1 percent in no click at all.
• 62.2 percent: The percentage of desktop Google searches that result in an organic click, 2.8 percent in a paid click, and 35% in no click.

SEO Ranking Statistics

These Google ranking statistics may surprise you. Check out these ranking SEO statistics:

• Google search sends no organic search traffic to 90.63 percent of pages.
• Only 49% of the time does the top-ranking page receive the most search traffic.
• Within a year of publication, only 5.7 percent of pages will rank in the top 10 search online research results.
• A meta description is missing on 25.02 percent of the top-ranking pages.
• 40.61 percent of pages have truncated meta descriptions.
• Only 37.22 percent of the time does Google display meta descriptions in search results. This figure rises to 40.35 percent for fat-head keywords and falls to 34.38 percent for long-tail keywords.
• The average top-ranking page also appears in the top ten search results for nearly 1,000 additional relevant keywords.
• The average top-ten page is more than two years old.

SEO and Search Engine Marketing Statistics

As SEOs, we must understand where search engines are now and where they are headed.

• Snippets appeared in the search results for 12.29 percent of search queries.
• The top organic search result on Google has a CTR of 31.7 percent on average.
• Google receives an estimated 3.5 billion searches per day.
• A relevant search influences 39 percent of buyers.
• No-click in 61.5 percent of desktop searches and 34.4 percent of mobile searches. 

Video SEO Statistics

We’ve had a lot of success using video marketing to drive customers. Are you doing it as well? If not, these figures or video SEO statistics may surprise you.

• Video has surpassed blogs and infographics as the most popular form of media in content strategy.
• Higher YouTube rankings were strongly related to the number of comments, views, shares, and ‘likes.’
• HD videos account for 68.2 percent of first-page YouTube results.
• A first-page YouTube video is 14 minutes and 50 seconds long on average. 

Voice Search Statistics

Here are some stats using voice search. “Hey, Google, how’s the state of voice search right now?” ”

• A featured snippet is responsible for 40.7 percent of all voice search answers.
• The average voice search result is only 29 words long.
• Approximately 75% of voice search results are in the top three for that query.
• A voice search result’s average reading level is 9th grade.
• Websites with high ‘link authority’ perform well in voice search. A Google Home result’s average Domain Rating is 76.8.
• Voice is used by 48% of consumers for “general web searches”.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vs. Other Marketing Channels

Check out these SEO marketing statistics below:

• The percentage of all trackable traffic that comes from paid search is 15%. 
• 5%: The proportion of all trackable traffic that comes from paid social. 
• 15%: The percentage of all trackable traffic that comes from sources other than Google. 
• The percentage of the global online population that uses voice search on mobile is 27%. 
• 20: The amount of times SEO generates more traffic than PPC on both mobile and desktop.

How should these Stats Influence your 2022 Strategy?

When developing an SEO strategy, companies have a lot to think about, especially since so many changes from year to year. However, based on the above SEO statistics, here are some of the most important things to remember for the rest of 2022:

• Concentrate on Google optimization.
• When possible, prefer long-form content to short-form content on your blog.
• Experiment with local search engine optimization and voice search if you serve a local audience.
• To reach younger audiences and improve your search ranking, use images, video, and other visuals. But keep in mind that no matter which tactics you use, your ultimate goal as a digital marketer is to establish your company or brand as the most trusted teacher in your industry.

That includes answering buyers’ most pressing questions honestly and candidly, as well as ensuring that they can be found in search engines when prospects look for them. With all the provided SEO statistics above, provided by Mach1Design, you can build and support your digital marketing approach, plan, and guide around a funnel that has been shown to increase performance. Call our digital marketing agency right away for free consultation on all of your digital strategies. You can email us at [email protected] or call 318-349-4998.