62.41% of All Google Searches Generate 0 Clicks

By Neil Patel

SEO is all about ranking high on Google.

The higher your rank the more clicks you get to your website.

But what if Google starts sending fewer clicks to websites over time, what should you do?

Well, just look at the graph below. It breaks down the last 4 years of click on Google.

According to data that we pulled from Ubersuggest, 62.41% of all searches globally get 0 clicks.

Literally 0 clicks.

But here’s where it gets interesting…

Expect fewer clicks over time

Over time the number of people that clicked on no result has increased. It went from 54.11% in 2017 to 62.41% in 2020.

Now keep in mind we don’t have data on every single Google search, as only Google would have that.

But we buy data from a few different providers and we have data on hundreds of millions of searches each year. So directionally the data is accurate.

Here’s where it gets interesting. According to Comscore 50% of the searches are voice search.

The data providers we get our Ubersuggest data from don’t have access to voice search data yet. So, you can assume the number of “no clicks” is actually greater than what’s presented above.

None-the-less you should expect it to get worse over time as the graph is showing.

Now, why is this? Well, it’s because Google is answering your questions for you when you search.

For example, if you type in, “Las Vegas weather”, you’ll see a listing like this:

Google’s pulling the data from weather.com, but there really isn’t a need for you to click on over to weather.com.

And as a user, this provides me with a better user experience, so I like it. But if I was a website like weather.com I probably wouldn’t as it decreases my traffic, which decreases my ad revenue.

Expect Google to continually do this more over time as it tends to create a better user experience.

Is it fair that Google does this?

Before I dive more into the data and give you ways to increase your SEO traffic, even though Google is taking away some of your clicks… I want you to keep this in mind.

A lot of marketers and business owners don’t like this, and they complain that what Google is doing isn’t fair.

But hey, it’s up to you if you want Google to even crawl your site. If you don’t like it, you can always block Google from your site.

I personally don’t have an issue. Just imagine life with Google, it would suck.

And as a searcher, I don’t want to search for the weather and have to click on a few links to get my answer, I just want to know the weather right now in the least number of clicks.

I recommend that you focus on what you can control versus worrying about what you can’t, such as Google’s future plans or random algorithm updates.