Google Zero Clicks Rise, Organic CTR Trending Down, Still Majority of Clicks over Paid
A recent post from Rand Riskfin on SparkToro digs into new data from Jumpshot that reveals a rise in Google searches resulting in ZERO clicks over the last two years–specifically on mobile. Mobile “zero click” searches have grown 11% while desktop “zero-click” searches have grown 9.5%.
These trends have resulted from the ever-changing SERPs: the biggest factors being the addition of four paid search search ads above the search results (in addition to how these ads now closely resemble the organic results) and the rise in universal results (featured snippets, direct answer boxes / zero results, people also ask boxes, image and video results).
Key Takeaways
- Zero-click searches are steadily growing
- Google keeps needing to innovate and change how ads are displayed to grow and maintain paid CTR
- Organic CTR, while still 10X bigger than paid on mobile and nearly 20X on desktop, is trending down
Yet, Organic Visits Still Continue to Grow
Even though zero-click results are trending upwards and organic CTR is trending downwards–organic visits, according to the Merkle Q3 Digital Marketing Report, have increased. Despite the increasing challenges for organic search as an acquisition channel, it still pays to invest in SEO as it will still garnish the majority of traffic and it is continuing to grow.
According to the report:
- Organic search posted a nearly 6% Y/Y increase in visits in Q3 2018, its second-best rate of growth in the past three years. Phone organic search visits grew 18% Y/Y, their strongest result since Q3 2015; meanwhile, desktop visit declines have become less severe in recent quarters.
- Organic search visits produced by Google grew nearly 9% in Q3 2018, up from 2% growth a quarter earlier. This was Google’s strongest performance since Q2 2015, which was just before Google rolled out a wave of additional ad inventory.
- The Mobile Click Share Gap Between Organic and Paid Search is Shrinking: Phones and tablets combined to produce 56% of organic search visits in Q3 2018. For comparison, phones and tablets produced 62% of paid search clicks in the same quarter, reflecting how well monetized the mobile search results page has become. With that noted, the six-point gap between mobile’s share of organic and paid search has shrunk from the nine-point gap that existed in early 2017.
Merkle’s report confirms “how well monetized the mobile search results page has become.” The interesting piece is that the gap between mobile’s share of organic and paid search has shrunk Y/Y. This would seem somewhat conflicting with the increase in mobile paid CTR and decrease in mobile organic CTR from the SparkToro post. I believe this can be explained by the growth of mobile organic visits. These reports are measuring two different pieces of data, one being CTR in the SERPs and the other traffic to websites.
Google Ads Introduces New Targeting Options and Metrics
New Demographic Targeting Options
There are new detailed demographic targeting options available in Google Ads that enable you to target your campaigns to users based on their Education, Marital Status, Homeowner Status or Parental Status. Advertisers can use this new data to create bid adjustments for different demographics, exclude demographics from seeing their ads, or even exclusively target a specific demographic in campaigns.
We see continue to see expanding options as Audience Targeting becomes increasingly effective and important.
The new detailed demographic targets for parental status include:
- Parents of Infants (0-1 years)
- Parents of Toddlers (1-3 years)
- Parents of Preschoolers (4-5 years)
- Parents of Grade schoolers (6 -12 years)
- Parents of Teens (13 – 17 years)
New detailed demographic targets for marital status:
- Single
- In a relationship
- Married
New detailed demographic targets for education:
- Current College Students
- High School Graduates
- Obtained Bachelor’s Degree
- Obtained Advanced Degree
New detailed demographic targets for homeowner status:
- Homeowners
- Renters
New Search Ad Position Metrics
Google Ads has also introduced four new search position metrics to better understand where your ads appear on the search results page. Unlike the Average Position metric, which reflects the order your ads appears verses other ads in the auction, these new metrics are meant to provide clearer insights into where exactly ads appear on the page.
- Impr. (Absolute Top) % – the percent of your ad impressions that are shown as the very first ad above the organic search results.
- Impr. (Top) % – the percent of your ad impressions that are shown anywhere above the organic search results.
- Search (Absolute Top) IS – the impressions you’ve received in the absolute top location (the very first ad above the organic search results) divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location.
- Search (Top) IS – the impressions you’ve received in the top location (anywhere above the organic search results) compared to the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location.
New Control to Target YouTube Users on Connected TVs
Google has introduced a new TV screens device type for video ads that will allow advertisers to reach users on devices that stream TV content – such as smart TVs, gaming consoles and streaming devices like Chromecast. The TV screens device type joins computers, mobile phones and tablets in Google Ads and Display & Video 360, meaning you can tailor your campaigns for connected TVs – for example, by using a different creative or setting a specific device bid adjustment. You can also see reporting for ads that run on TV screens to help you determine the impact of these ads within your overall mix.