The no-click trend is growing more and more, making SEO experts tremble: this year 49% of Google searches do not generate a click.
Since 2016 searches that do not generate clicks have increased by 12%, as it makes all SEO professionals tremble. Research has shown how and why clicks on organic results have decreased. Users stop on the Google Search page satisfied with the responses received thanks to Google features and snippets or from Google Ads. The no-click trend is more present on mobile devices. When browsing from a mobile device the user has less desire to scroll the page and stops at the first entries of the SERP which consist of paid ads and Google snippets.
The reasons behind the decrease in clicks on organic results
The reasons that lead the user not to leave the SERP are different, but they can be identified in three main factors.
1- Features of Google. The search engine is always careful to improve the user experience on the web. Finding information without leaving the search page certainly increases the customer journey. The user can find various types of information on search results: music texts, directions, tourist information, food delivery, etc. These Google snippets occupy the top of the search page, moving organic results lower and lower. It should also be emphasized that the user tends not to deepen his research on other sites because he places extreme trust in Google.
2- Mobile. Although clicks on organic searches have gone down, clicks on ads and ADS are going up. This must be attributed to the increasing attitude of using smartphones instead of desktops, and as said before, on the mobile, the user is more “hasty”: he looks for answers faster and expects an even faster response. It then stops at the very first results of the SERP which are the announcements. It should also be remembered that the habit of using voice search both through the app and through the assistant is becoming increasingly popular. In this way Google will be able to provide a simple voice response to the answer, leaving the user satisfied.
3- Meta tags and previews too exhaustive and not inherent. The last factor is perhaps the most obvious, but never banal, and is prior to all these Google evolutions. Often the user does not click during his search because the previews of the websites and the Meta tags already contain the information he is looking for or are perceived by the user as not inherent to his search, so as to convince him to do another one.
Those involved in online promotion know how thin the line that separates “giving too much information” and “giving little information” is. Building metatags is an art that is refined over time and consists precisely in giving the user enough answers to entice him to access the website.
No-click trend: should we despair?
Anyone who works in a web agency and deals with web marketing must certainly not despair. As mentioned before, the ad campaigns on Google are buying more and more clicks, so just integrate a Google ADS ad campaign into your SEO strategy so as not to miss visits to the site. Furthermore, in sectors where Google does not compete directly, there may be fewer total clicks available, but probably more total searches and the optimization of the web site’s meta tags will increase the flow of visits.
Google and searches: almost one in two ends in zero clicks
The latter is the most striking figure: almost half of the searches in the United States ended up in a “zero-click “, ending directly on the SERP returned by Google for any of the possible reasons. By widening the time factor, it turns out that zero-click searches on Google have steadily increased in the past three years, with a 12 percent increase between 2016 and today’s habits.
In short, we can talk about a continuous erosion of organic clicks: In the first quarter of 2019 organic search clicks from Google’s SERPs were around 61.5 billion, while only three years ago they were 75.6 billion, or 20 percent more.
Organic CTR also falls, and announcement rises
In the same period, there is also a change in the click-through rate, which has a diversified trend compared to the marketing channel: the CTR of organic searches has fallen by 13 percent, settling at 47.4 percent, while the CTR of SERP ads rose 75 percent to 3.69 percent.
Organic click erosion for Google searches
This scenario assumes significant importance especially for mobile navigation: it is precisely those who go online from smartphones or other devices that use less Google as a search engine. The data show precisely the increase in zero-click searches and clicks on ads compared to the past, just as it is evident that the opportunities for organic search traffic from mobile have decreased more drastically compared to the desktop.
The reasons for zero-click searches
According to analysts, the trends examined are attributable to ” aggressive features in SERP and Google’s immediate responses” (without forgetting the answers to the voice searches made through the assistant), as well as the presence of the ads in the above the fold area of the display of mobile devices (often in numbers that cover the entire screen) induces the user to stop at these paid results.
Results that do not respond to the search intent
There are two factors that explain the increase in the zero-click trend in SERP. On the one hand, there are results offered to the user that do not correspond to his real intent; therefore, the person does not need to click on the results because the titles of the reference pages are sufficient to understand that he must make a new request, perhaps more specific. On the other hand, Google’s algorithm is not perfect and is not always able to accurately understand the wishes of users.
The user journey is completed on Google
The other reason is the most annoying for publishers and refers to the continuous evolution of Google, which has enriched its traditional page with additional information results that can often satisfy and satisfy users’ needs: the featured snippets, the knowledge graph, the carousels and all the other boxes and snippets in the foreground of Google Search facilitate the user experience, but at the same time complicate the life of the sites that base their strategy on the classic positioning in SERP.
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