Surprising search behavior teaches this important lesson

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You have 173 days left to achieve your marketing goals this year.

Well, let's be honest. After December 20th, nobody works or does anything. And if we're being completely honest, December itself is a bust, as is the last week of November with the American Thanksgiving holiday.

So you actually have 133 days to achieve your marketing goals.

How are you?

If your goals are related to organic search, you've had a challenging year. Search continues to disrupt the work of content and marketing teams. From new algorithms to false starts and incomplete paths to AI-generated overviews, it's a shambles.

We turned to Robert Rose, CMI's chief strategy advisor, to help us untangle the news and help you head into the next 133 days with more purpose. Check out his take or read on:

Analyze search behavior

SparkToro released its 2024 Zero-Click Search Study this month, and you might be surprised at how much traffic isn't generated by search these days.

With zero-click search, the searcher gets their answer on the results page without having to click on a link. For example, if a searcher asks, “What is the address of the White House?”, the address – 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – appears on the results page, so the searcher never visits www.WhiteHouse.gov.

Rand Fishkin and his team at SparkToro studied millions upon millions of Google searches around the world using what they call a multimillion-device clickstream panel. They didn't look at keywords, which wouldn't have been particularly helpful anyway. Instead, they looked at what Americans and Europeans do after they perform a search.

What did they find?

More than a third (37%) of users complete their search without clicking. Of the remaining users, 21% conduct another search and 41% click on something.

70% of clicks go to an organic result and 28.5% land on another Alphabet website (i.e. Google) such as YouTube, Maps, Images or News. And 1% clicks on a paid ad.

While there are nuances in mobile and voice search, these numbers are interesting. For example, nearly 30% of clicks go to a Google site, where Alphabet can further monetize searchers' actions. That doesn't even include the 21% who end up on a Google site when searching again because they didn't get the right, best, or most satisfactory answer the first time.

But the real point is this: only 360 out of 1,000 Google searches in the US lead to the open web.

The study concludes that Google is NOT losing out on search, despite what many believe. Google is doing a very good job of translating more searches into more opportunities to keep users in the Google ecosystem.

Develop your Google strategy

What is the conclusion?

People exaggerate their claims that AI summaries (the AI-generated summary at the top of the results) and the quality of Google search results are failing.

The study clearly shows that marketers can no longer view Google Search as an isolated entity. In a more perfect world, there would be relevant content on other Google platforms – YouTube, News, Maps, etc. – and every blog post should be accompanied by a video, a piece of news, etc.

The most important lesson from the study, however, is that marketers need to take a close look at the Google ecosystem to figure out where they have the best chance of serving as a starting point for searchers. At least initially, that's most likely not a link to your website or blog.

One could wax philosophical about the technically complex nature of zero search results, but the simplest way to deal with it is to ask, “How do we become the answer that Google uses for this particular query?”

I can tell you from experience the benefits of this. For a few years, when you asked “What is content marketing?”, you would see a page from the Content Marketing Institute. In recent years, Google has changed that. CMI remains the #1 organic answer for the search query, but above it is a “dictionary box” with a third-party definition that I don't think is quite right.

You have to understand that the search game is rigged. Google optimizes for Google, not for your brand.

Even if you hate the game, you have to play it. But the way you play it is becoming increasingly complex. Take comfort in the fact that Google seems to reward good, high-quality, informative content. Make that what you continue to create for the rest of the 133 days minus six minutes or so you have left until the end of the year.

Want more content marketing tips, insights, and examples? Subscribe to CMI's weekday or weekly emails.

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Cover photo by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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