Here’s how looking for statistics usually goes:
- You look statistics up, you find an interesting one from 2024. Click the source.
- Turns out the source was just another blog post not the original—and it was just a republished one from 2020 with the title changed. You click again.
- After deep diving and more clicks, you either can’t find the original, or finally find the first source and it’s from a 2015 study.
We did the work, we dug deep to get you up-to-date SEO statistics in 2024.
General SEO Stats
- Google Search is the #1 source of information when buyers begin their journey (OGM, 2023)
- 48.9% of marketing experts stated that over the last 12 months, SEO has become more important to their content strategy (Superpath, 2023)
- Organic search is the 2nd highest traffic channel at 29% (SEMrush, 2024)
- 11.3% stated that AI would be one of the most important emerging factors impacting search rankings in the coming 2 years (Statista, 2022)
- 75% of marketers believe that AI-enabled search engines will positively impact their blogs, and 68% predict that their site will get more traffic. Only 9% believe this will harm blog traffic (Hubspot State of Marketing Report, 2024)
- As of January 2024, Google’s desktop search engine market share was 81.95% (Statistisa)
- The #1 organic result in a SERP get’s 27.6% of all Clicks (Backlinko, 2023)
- In fact, only .63% of Google searchers clicked on something from the second page. (Backlinko)
- 1/3 of businesses commit to organic search strategies, valuing the traffic drawn by relevant search queries (Forbes, 2024)
- Top-ranking organic search results see a 22.4% click-through rate (Semrush, 2024)
- In 2024, the top three disruptions in SEO performance are expected from Generative AI, Google E-E-A-T, and automated tools. (AIOSEO, 2024)
- 46% of marketers attribute SEO investments to successful marketing campaigns (Forbes, 2024)
- 80% of B2B buyers are satisfied with B2B Google search results (OGM, 2023)
- In 2023, “YouTube” was the most searched keyword on Google, with over 340 million monthly online searches (Statista, 2023)
- 26% of marketing budget goes toward SEO (Forbes, 2024)
- E-commerce accounts for over 20% of all global retail sales (Statista, 2023)
- In 2023, over 450 participants in Superpath’s State of Content Marketing cited content creation as their main area of focus regarding SEO (Superpath, 2023)
- Search traffic for the Electronics, Beauty, Media, and Food industries all grew in 2022. Traffic for both Service, Technology and Fashion dropped significantly. (Semrush, 2023)
AI Stats
- Most commonly used AI tools used by marketing professionals include: chatbots (53%), text generation tools (44%), visual tools (44%), audio tools (31%) (Hubspot, 2024)
- The most common use cases to use AI in content creation include: finding ideas and inspiration (45%), creating outlines (31%) and drafting content (18%) (Hubspot, 2024)
- AI image and video generators are among the top tools businesses are looking to try in 2024 (Semrush, 2024)
- A Deloitte Digital study found that three of the top five AI objectives of the companies they surveyed was marketing-related (Deloitte, 2023)
- 51% of SEO specialists don’t think AI will impact their SEO strategy
- 26% of B2B marketers who applied chatbots in their marketing activities saw a 10-20% increase in leads (Statista, 2022)
- Two-thirds of jobs could be partially automated by AI. But many of these jobs will be complemented by AI, not substituted by it (Goldman Sachs, 2023)
- 87% of SEO specialists say they use AI and automation to align content with search intent
- (Hubspot, 2023)
- In 2024, the global AI market size is close to $298 billion. By 2030, the market size is expected to reach nearly $2 trillion (Semrush, 2023)
- 51% of SEO specialists don’t think AI will impact their SEO strategy (Hubspot, 2023)
- 67% of marketers believe that increasing the adoption of marketing automation is critical for acquiring and retaining customers (MailChimp, 2023)
Backlink Stats
- The #1 result on Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions 2-10 (Backlinko, 2024)
- In a 13-month Semrush study, 92.3% of the 100 top-ranking domains had at least one backlink (Semrush, 2022)
- Long-form content is ideal for backlink acquisition, with an average of 77.2% more links (Backlinko, 2024)
- Google’s top-ranking result typically boasts nearly 4x the backlinks of its subsequent 9 competitors (Forbes, 2024)
- Around 67.5% of SEO experts believe backlinks impact search engine rankings (uSERP, 2022)
- Businesses using link-building strategies report a 45% greater success rate (Forbes, 2024)
- Over 50% of qualified sites without at least one backlink never reached the first page (Semrush, 2022)
- About 40% of SEO experts believe quality backlinks has the most impact on rankings and authority (uSERP, 2022)
Local SEO Stats
- 77% of consumers use Google when looking for local business information (Statista, 2023)
- Searches for “open now near me” have grown globally by over 400% YOY (Google Retail Marketing Guide, 2022)
- 21% of people in the US use the internet to find a local business daily (Statista, 2023)
- 98% of people read online reviews for local businesses (Brightlocal, 2023)
- Customers are 2.7x more likely to consider your business “reputable” if they see a complete Business Profile when browsing Search and Google Maps (Google, 2023)
- In 2024, 75% of consumers are ‘always’ or ‘regularly’ reading online reviews (Brightlocal, 2024)
Mobile SEO Stats
- There are 5.44 billion unique mobile phone users worldwide ( We Are Social, 2023)
- The average U.S. household had 22 connected devices in 2022 (Deloitte, 2022)
- Users take more time making a decision while searching on mobile (Semrush, 2022)
- 80% of Gen Z, 62% of millennials, 66% of Gen X, 35% of Boomers, and 52% of the general population primarily use mobile search (Hubspot State of Marketing Report 2024)
- As of February 2024, people using mobile devices contribute to 61.21% of all website traffic (Exploding Topics, 2024)
- Africa ihas the highest proportion of internet traffic coming from mobile devices (69.13%) (Exploding Topics)
- Google accounts for over 95% of global mobile search market share (StatCounter, 2023)
- Most Google search queries are 3-4 words long (Semrush, 2022)
Video SEO Stats
- 60% of video marketers quantify ROI through video engagement such as likes, shares and reposts (Wyzowl, 2024)
- Video is one of the best performing content marketing formats by 45% (Forbes, 2024)
- 68% of of marketers who don’t use video say they plan to start using video in 2024 (Wyzowl, 2024)
- Short-form video is the top trend marketers report leveraging in 2023 (Hubspot State of Marketing Report, 2023)
- 39% of video marketers have created video testimonials, making it the most popular singular use case for video marketing in 2024 (Wyzowl, 2024)
- The top YouTube searches in 2022 were “TikTok mashup 2022” in the US and “Ukraine” worldwide (Semrush, 2022)
- YouTube is the most popular video marketing platform, used by 90% of video marketers. Around 86% use Facebook, while 79% use Instagram and LinkedIn (Wyzowl, 2024)
Voice search Stats
- 13% of marketers are leveraging voice search optimization (Alexa, Siri, etc.) as part of their marketing strategy (Hubspot State of Marketing Report 2023)
- 50% of US consumers use voice search voice search on a daily basis (Upcity, 2022)
- Weather-related searches were the most frequently performed with voice assistants in a 2022 survey (Statista, 2022)
- About 90% of people think voice search is easier and faster than traditional search (TechReport, 2023)
- Ad spending in the digital audio advertising market is projected to reach more than $10 billion in 2023 and $13 billion in 2028 (Statista, 2023)
A special thanks to the subject-matter experts that contributed statistical reports to this article:
Mohit Maheshwari from NMG Technologies and Amit Raj from The Links Guy.