In the following article you will find up-to-date statistics on Google ranking factors, search engine usage, voice search, video SEO, mobile optimisation, backlinks, local SEO, keywords and much more.

Let's start with critical statistics about search engines, SEO and the SEO industry. We've sourced these statistics from industry studies, surveys, reports and even statements from Google. Let's get straight to the point by unpacking this interesting information.

Google's ranking algorithm uses more than 200 factors to rank websites.
According to StatistaGoogle has control of 86.86% of the search engine market today.
Approximately 32% of all clicks go to the number one result on Google.
Marketers report that organic search is the marketing channel with the best ROI, according to the Search Engine Journalwith a 49% back-up.
Google's page 1 contains on average 1,447 words in its organic search results.
Before deciding whether to make a purchase, 53% of U.S. consumers research products using a search engine, according to Google.
According to BacklinkoThe average salary of an SEO professional is around $60.5k per year.
Approximately 60% of the pages appearing in Google's top 10 results are 3 years old or older, according to Ahrefs.
According to Andrey Lipattsev, a renowned Google search quality strategist, the most important factors for Google search results are links, content and RankBrain. This information was reported by the specialist portal Search Engine Watch.
A recent study carried out by Sparktoro revealed that organic search on Google represents the most important source of traffic on the internet, with an impressive 59.2% of total traffic worldwide. This means that Google remains the most used search engine in the world.

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How many daily searches do users make on Google every day?

Currently, the number of searches on Google per day exceeds 7 billion, which translates into people performing 81,000 searches per second. If we look at how many people use Google annually, the number was more than 2.55 trillion searches in 2020.

Source: Worldometers

How have these numbers changed in terms of Google's search growth?

Number of Google searches in 2020

81,000 searches per second in 2020, up from 63,000 searches in 2016.
4.9 million searches per minute in 2020, up from 3.8 million searches in 2016.
292 million searches per hour in 2020, up from 228 million searches in 2016.
7 billion searches per day by 2020, up from 5.5 billion searches in 2016.
212 billion searches per month by 2020, up from 167 billion searches in 2016.
2.55 trillion searches per year by 2020, up from 2.00 trillion searches in 2016.

Source: Worldometers, SearchEngineLand.

However, for those wishing to quote actual figures, it should be noted that Google has not provided its data for some time, and these are the most up-to-date estimates available online.

If anything, they are a lower estimate than the actual figures, so it is a safe bet to quote 'or more' with any mention of the above numbers.

How many people use Google every day?

On average, the typical internet user performs 4 Google searches per day. Based on these figures, the number of people using Google search on a daily basis is estimated to be approximately 1.7 billion, taking into account that there are 7 billion searches per day.

Source: 99firms.

Again, without Google publicly releasing their figures, it is best to assume that this is a rough estimate. In addition, another study I have looked at mentioned that only 15% of users perform more than one search per day in the US. With this in mind, this 15% could be raising the overall average used for this calculation.

How many web pages exist on Google?

It is estimated that the number of websites in the world today is around 1.72 billion. In 2020, there are 58 billion unique web pages indexed in Google search, representing an increase of 38.1% in five years. In 2013, Google reported having 30 billion pages in its index and crawled 100 billion pages per month, some with higher return frequency, of course.

Source: WorldWebSize, Statista.

02. Voice search

Voice searches are starting to replace traditional text-based searches. This should come as no surprise as voice searches are faster and easier than typing on a keyboard or smartphone screen. And if you want to excel in your content marketing for voice search, these stats will help you get started.

After analysing 10,000 Google Home search results, Brian Dean found that 40.7% of all voice search responses came from a Featured Snippet.
Websites with HTTPS account for 70.4% of voice search results pages.
Voice search results contain an average of only 29 words.
Pages using Schema account for only 36.4% of voice search results, compared to the global average of 31.3%.
Pages using Schema account for only 36.4% of voice search results, compared to the global average of 31.3%.
The average Google voice search result receives 1,199 Facebook shares and 44 tweets.
The average reading level of a voice search result is ninth grade.
Voice search results typically load in 4.6 seconds, which is 52% faster than the average page load time.
The average Google voice search result page contains 2,312 words.
Approximately 75% of voice search results come from one of the top three desktop ranking pages for a given query.
Voice searches on mobile devices are 3 times more likely to be for something local than text searches (Search Engine Watch).
ComScore predicted that search queries will account for half of all searches by 2020. No updated figures have been released, but one study puts smart speaker ownership in the US at around 90 million (Voicebot).

What is the market share of voice search?

According to Google data, voice search has a 20% market share of all Google searches in the US application. By 2022, more than half of US households are expected to own a device with a smart speaker.

Source: Google.

How many people use voice search on mobile phones?

According to Google, 27% of the world's population conducts voice searches on mobile devices. Globally, of the 3.5 billion smartphone users, more than 1.1 billion smartphone users use voice technology at least once a week.

Source: Google.

How many people use Alexa or Google Home?

There are more than 50 million Alexa and Google Home smart speakers in the US, with an average of 2.52 people per US household. In 2018, the Amazon Echo had an ownership rate of 24% among Americans aged 18-24, of which 44% ordered products once a week using voice search.

Source: Google, TechCrunch.

03. Video SEO Statistics

There is no doubt that online video is growing rapidly. The question is: how do you optimise your videos to reach the right people, and how do you get your videos to rank at the top of the world's second largest search engine (YouTube)? Well, check out these super cool video SEO stats!

An analysis of 1.3 million YouTube videos found that the number of comments, views, shares and likes had a strong correlation with higher YouTube ranking.
Videos on the front page of YouTube have an average length of 14 minutes and 50 seconds.
68.2% of the results on the first page of YouTube are HD videos.
Videos that attract new subscribers tend to rank higher on YouTube.
Posts with videos get more backlinks and see an increase of 157% in search traffic (Search Engine People).
Contrary to popular belief, there is no correlation between YouTube rankings and video descriptions that have been optimised for keywords.

Video marketing engagement statistics

According to Wordstream, 49% of marketers increase revenue faster if they use video in their strategy, and 51% of marketers consider it the best content for ROI. In addition, 64% of consumers who watch branded videos on social media make a purchase afterward.

In the Americas, 85% of all internet users interact with video content each month, and 86% of consumers say they would like to see more video content from the brands they support.

Source: Wordstream.

How many videos are on YouTube?

The number of videos created on YouTube exceeds 5 billion, and these come from the 50 million unique users who upload them. According to YouTube, more than 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute and people spend more than 40 minutes in an average viewing session.

YouTube is one of the few social networking platforms that are not drastically dependent on mobile, and the user base remains fairly balanced, with 50% in each direction.

Source: Omnicore Agency.

How many daily video views are there on Facebook?

The number of daily video views on Facebook exceeds 8 billion. On average, this equates to 100 million hours of video consumed each day. Surprisingly, 85% of these videos are watched without sound, one in five of these videos are live streams and 98% of all views come from mobile devices.

Source: Omnicore Agency.

04. Local SEO Statistics

It is no surprise that Google uses a multitude of ranking factors to position the map listing or Google My Business. The statistics below reflect the importance of building a local SEO strategy for any business wishing to grow in their market.

46% of all Google searches are for a local business or local service (Search Engine Roundtable).
25% of small business websites do not have an H1 tag (Fresh Chalk).
A page of Yelp is present in the top 5 results for 92% for search queries containing a city and a business category (Fresh Chalk).
After searching for something nearby on a smartphone, 76% of people end up visiting the business within 1 day (Google).
28% of local searches result in a purchase (Google).

How many searches are conducted each month?

Based on the previous report stating that 46% of all searches have local intent, the number of local searches per month is 97 billion. Over a 12-month period, this totals 1.17 trillion per year. If we want to break this down, it means that there are 3.2 billion local searches per day, or 37,000 local searches per second. This data shows the growth potential your business can have if your Google My Business listing is well SEO optimised.

Source: 99firms

What percentage of people ended up on visits after conducting a local search?

According to Google, people who use their platform for local search visit 1.5 billion places each month as a result. This represents 32.8% of all internet users visiting a local business.

What percentage of people who conducted a local search made a purchase?

The number of people who will shop locally after conducting a search is 78%, which includes shopping online and in physical shops of local businesses. Globally, 56% of people shop both online and in local shops.

Source: Google

05. Mobile SEO Statistics

30% of all mobile searches are location-related (Google).
Mobile devices account for 58% of all Google searches (hitwise).
The organic click-through rate on mobile devices is approximately 50% lower than on desktop (SparkToro).
51% of smartphone users have found a new company or product when searching on mobile (Google).
The top organic result on mobile devices receives 27.7% of clicks, compared to 19.3% of clicks on desktop (SEOClarity).
87% of smartphone owners use a search engine on a daily basis (Go-Globe).
Voice searches now account for 20% of queries on mobile devices (Search Engine Land).

Percentage of mobile VS Tablet searches

When looking at the market share of all search engines worldwide, mobile devices account for 50,21%, while tablets account for 2,62% (a total of 52,83% for mobile devices). Tablets have reached a plateau, while desktops have increased at the expense of mobile devices in the latter part of 2020.

Source: Statcounter GlobalStats

For Google alone, mobile devices account for 58% of all searches, as mentioned earlier in the list of statistics. Mobile devices also account for a more significant percentage of paid clicks on Google, at 62%.

06. Backlink Statistics (Linkbuilding)

Does Google still use inbound links in its algorithm after all these years? Yes! Let's take a look at a handful of statistics that show that link building is still super important for search engine optimisation.

A study published in Backlinko found that the number of domains linking to a page was the factor that had the highest correlation with Google rankings.
More than 66% of the pages do not have any inbound links pointing to them (Ahrefs).
On average, long content receives 77.2% more inbound links than short articles.
The page at the top of the search results receives between 5% and 14.5% more inbound follow links from new websites each month (Ahrefs).
A study by Ahrefs found that 43.7% of the top-ranked pages in Google contain reciprocal links (Ahrefs).
Companies with blogs receive 97% more inbound links to their site (HubSpot).

07. Keyword Statistics

Here are the statistics on related searches for things in search engines.

The first 5 organic results on search results pages (SERPs) account for 67.6% of all clicks (Zero Limit Web).
50% search queries contain 4 or more words (WordStream).
More than 29% of the keywords with more than 10K+ monthly searches consist of 3 or more words (Ahrefs).
Approximately 8% of searches are formulated as a query (Moz).

Top 20 most searched words on Google

The top search engine queries in the United States are as follows. As expected, these are almost exclusively brand-related search terms.

By researching what people are looking for in GoogleYou will notice that number 5 is people searching for 'Google' on Google, which may seem a little crazy at first glance. However, there are a large number of people who want to get to the Google home page options to direct their queries at Google Images, Google Video, Google Maps, etc.

08. Search Engine Trends

SEO is constantly changing. And it seems to be changing faster than ever. That's why I decided to include a collection of stats that focus on emerging trends in the SEO world, such as featured snippets, Google algorithm updates, current ROI, organic CTR and more.

12.3% of the search queries contain a featured snippet (Ahrefs)
18% of search engines enter a new query before clicking on any of their original search results (Moz)
The 75% of search engines never go beyond the first page of search results (HubSpot)
21% of searchers click on more than one search result (Moz)
Google reported making more than 3,620 search "improvements" in 2018 (Search Engine Journal)
More than 3.5 billion searches are performed daily on Google (SEO burn)
94% of the clicks in the SERP go to organic results (Search Engine Watch)
Breakdown of global desktop search engine traffic: Google (72.4%), Bing (12.3%), Baidu (11.3%), Yahoo (1.9%) (NetMarketShare)
BrightEdge found that organic traffic accounts for more than 40% of revenues in the retail, media and entertainment, business services, technology/internet and hospitality sectors (BrightEdge)
Pages ranking 1 to 3 in the search engine results pages (SERP) generate a click-through rate (CTR) of 36% (Searchmetrics)
99.58% of the featured snippets already rank 1-10 on Google (Ahrefs)
There are more than 86,000 Google searches every second (Internet Live Stats)
WordStream found that brand affinity helps increase CTR by 2-3 times (WordStream)
SEMrush found that users visit between 3 and 3.5 pages each time a user arrives at a website from a search (SEMrush)
The average bounce rate for the top 3 domains is 49% (SEMrush)
A Searchmetrics study found that the average time on site for a search result in the top 10 is 3 minutes and 10 seconds (Searchmetrics)
Organic traffic generates 300% more traffic to websites than social media (IronPaper)
A study by Ahrefs found that almost 91% of pages do not receive traffic from Google (Ahrefs)
The major search engines (Google, YouTube, Bing, Yahoo) represent 70.6% of all website traffic (SparkToro)

Top 5 search trends to consider

Let us consider these trends as the most relevant for the current year 2023:

For years Google has evaluated content by considering 3 values above all; Authority, Veracity and Expertise. In 2023 these values will be joined by Experience.
Keep your content focused on the topic or objective of your business.
Create content through subject matter experts
Content should be created for humans and not for the search engine.
Use AI or artificial intelligence content generation tools but review the content generated and on the basis of that be an expert in it.