Oct 14 2007
Google refers over 95 percent of Search Engine Traffic
I was reading at TechCrunch that Yahoo7 is struggling in Australia. Duncan states that various reports indicate that Google has 80-85% of the local search market in Australia. I thought I’d take a closer look at search engine referrers to this site, which gets a reasonable percentage of its traffic from Australia.
Over the course of the last few weeks, looking only at search engine referrals, Google analytics indicates that over 95% of search engine traffic is referred to this site by Google. (Yahoo, 2.13% and AOL 1.21%).
I’m just not sure if the logic follows that if I receive 95% of search engine traffic from Google, that 95% of the market uses Google as their search engine of choice. Perhaps Google is just more efficient at indexing pages? Though the major search engines seem to have all my relevant pages indexed.
Whilst blogs are probably not as reliant on search engine traffic as some traditional websites, a Google penalty (either removal or lower search engine rankings) would obviously hurt most bloggers. For the corresponding period Google brought 50% of all traffic.
Why Search Engine Optimisation is Important
If you’re looking to get traffic to your blog, I don’t think that you can afford to ignore search engine optimisation. I use a (free) traffic analysis/tracker called 103bees, which I’ve found provides some pretty interesting information. One thing it shows is top search terms per search engine result pages:
Notice that 95% of the search engine traffic has come from being ranked in the first 10 spots for a particular search term, and virtually 98% from the first 20. If you’re not there, well chances are you won’t get much traffic.
How to find out the percentage breakdown of search engine traffic in Google Analytics
In analytics – select “Traffic Sources”, and “Search Engines”
Make sure if you run any AdWord Campaigns that you select “non-paid” traffic
Finally, select the pie chart or bar graph option, which will display the percentage.
I’m interested to hear from other people:
- Does Google represent as large a share of your search engine traffic?
- Do you think this is an accurate reflection of the market share of individual search engines? Or perhaps blog consumers are more likely to use Google as their search engine of choice?
12 Responses to “Google refers over 95 percent of Search Engine Traffic”
Hi Meg
From my SEO work, my own site stats and the dozen+ sites I manage for other people I know that Google = 90+% of incoming website traffic for Australian sites. For US and global sites this changes as Yahoo, Ask and other search engines have more of the pie
Personally I’m on a quest to reduce the proportion of traffic I receive from Google and expand other sources to lower the risk of Google ranking changes having a huge effect on traffic numbers
Hi Neerav – Interesting to see other 90+% websites (I also have a couple of others showing the same).
When you say that you’re “personally on a quest” do you mean for your blog or for other websites as well? Believe me I understand your concern, but is it not something that’s in the hands of the “searcher” for the most part?
I mean for my own sites and for my SEO customers sites
It’s just to risky to rely on one source for anything whether its traffic, advertising income, investment income etc
I’m not saying I want less traffic from Google, what I’m aiming for is more traffic from stumbleupon, feed readers, other bloggers etc
It’s the same reason sensible people have a share portfolio of several stocks rather than just owning shares in one company … it spreads the risk around
I get almost all of my search traffic from Google as well.
Same here and the same for all my client websites.
Only 53% of my traffic overall came from Google search this month though. I’m a bit surprised by how low that figure is getting but agree with your point that blogs are less reliant on search engine traffic. Not to say of course that seo isn’t important for blogs – it’s very important.
I don’t place much value on search visitors. They come and they go – and have no loyalty. They usually haven’t come looking for a particular product/service of the website and a minute later they’re gone again. To get visitors looking for these things takes good old fashioned advertising and marketing. While a top-ten search result probably doesn’t hurt, the folks that come back again are usually directed by other sources – by a ratio greater than 100000 to 1 that I’ve measured.
I get tons of search traffic on my sites thanks to a wealth of content, but most of the PV’s which actually result in return visitors (and memberships) aren’t from search engines at all, but via referrals from places where these people visit regularly. 90% of my memberships are from OpenID directories, and probably 8% from interaction on relevant discussion boards and forums. That leaves 2% from all other sources, including search.
Another case in point… I didn’t find your own website on Google – in fact I found it via mybloglog.
Now if you’re playing the AdSense game, these search visitors might have monetary value as they flit around the net like honeybees looking for the next flower. It all depends on what you’re after. Traffic for traffic’s sake might be a goal for some, but I’m in it for other reasons.
Fascinating as always Meg
I’m new to this whole search engine optimisation thingy, and I get such a small amount of traffic (in general and from search engines) it’s really just fascinating reading at this stage. Still learning as I go 😉
I agree with Neerav though, about spreading “risk” around. The fact is 100% of anything is risky, particularly in this case, so it makes sense to increase other ways of gaining new visitors.
Neerav & Christine – agreed it’s good practice not to rely too heavily on one source – I like your “portfolio” analogy.
Mike – absolutely agree that search traffic can be very fickle for blogs, particularly so in my recent experience, when I just happened to write about something topical, but pretty much unrelated to blogging. They tended to be in & out – minimal page views and time spent on site, and I imagine the return rate would be very low.
Not having any paid advertising here, the number of eyeballs really don’t matter that much.
I guess the point that I was trying to make is that IF you are relying on search engines for a substantial amount of traffic:
1. you’ve got to be rating on goole
2. it’s really important to be ranking in the top 10 spots for your choice of terms, otherwise the traffic slows to a trickle.
Also having a defined niche would no doubt help, in that anyone who does happen to arrive at your site finds a wealth of related content (my blog is probably a bit too eclectic in that regard).
Kin – it sure is a learning experience. Glad you found it interesting.
Steven – enjoyed your SEO vs SMO article. Highly recommended reading.
It’s dangerous putting all your eggs in one basket. If you rely 100% on google for traffic you could find yourself in a lot of trouble if, for whatever reason, they decide to penalise you for something.
As site owners, I think we’d all be better off if the search engine market was a little more evenly spread. The way things are going Google really have a stranglehold on the search engine side of things, and if that’s maintained, it’s cause for concern.
just my 2 cents
webmenu.com.au receives 95% of search traffic from Google, 3% from Live, 1% from Yahoo & 1% from a combination of MSN, Altavista, Netscape, AOL & Ask.
SP – agree. It must be even more pertinent to you, given your recent “slap”.
David – Thanks for your feedback. Interesting to see your Google stats are very similar.
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