According to groundbreaking new data published by SparkToro in partnership with Datos, people’s searching behaviors are becoming more insular, with a quarter of all Google searches dominated by just a few thousand query terms. More widely, the top 10,000 search terms account for nearly half of all search activity.
One of the most interesting findings is that 15% of all Google search terms are driven by just 148 keywords.
The findings, which are based on a longitudinal study of 332 million search queries over a 21-month period, shed new light on how users interact with the world’s dominant search engine. The news will come as unwelcome to many businesses around the world, for whom it is becoming increasingly difficult to stand out online.
Users On Google Are Looking for Similar Things
New data from SparkToro and Datos reveals that a significant portion of Google searches are dedicated to a relatively tiny proportion of possible keywords.
Based on an analysis of 332 million queries for more than 320,000 unique query terms, people are visiting fewer websites over time. The study, which took place from January 2023 to September 2024, proves what a lot of brands suspect – that it’s harder than ever to cut through online.
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Remarkably, just 148 keywords account for 15% of all Google searches. Most of these are navigational queries – in other words, people using the search engine to get to a specific destination. Ten of the most popular search queries are: YouTube, Gmail, Amazon, Facebook, ChatGPT, Google Translate, WhatsApp Web, Google Maps, Pornhub, and Google Docs.
Study Shines Light on Searcher Behavior
The study set out to demystify Google search behavior, which accounts for about 90% of the online search market. With the recent proliferation of AI Overviews and other features, the search giant has never been more in the spotlight – and yet so little is known about how people actually use it. Until now.
Classifying data by brand, search intent, and topic, other findings suggest that just 10,000 possible queries make up a staggering 46% of all search activity. At the same time, 44% of all searches are for branded terms, such as “Nike socks,” compared with 56% for generic, unbranded terms, such as “socks.”
In terms of intent, over half (51%) of searches are informational, 14.5% are commercial, and a fraction (0.69%) are transactional. This means that the majority of users seek information, such as the weather forecast in their city, and a lesser portion are looking for financial or business services, such as a tree surgeon. Only a tiny portion are directly looking to make a purchase.
Businesses Facing Uphill Battle to Win Traffic
For businesses, the truth is writ large – winning traffic is harder than ever, and it will only continue to get worse. While a higher portion of organizations jostles for visibility, users gravitate towards big brands and topics. This is borne out by the numbers, with large organizations and individuals getting richer by the day in recent years.
To make matters worse, so-called “zero-click” answers, with AI Overviews prominently among them, already exert sizable control over many of the biggest topics that people are searching for. Specifically, Google’s own answers dominate five out of nine of the top search categories, including Arts and Entertainment, Games, Sports, Finance, and Reference.
This trend is unlikely to abate. Barring devastating ramifications resulting from the Department of Justice’s quest to break up the Google monopoly, companies around the world would be wise to go back to their respective drawing boards.
