Search engines have never been static. They’re constantly tweaking their rubrics for assessing content—not to mention the many outside influences. From semantic search to featured snippets to AI results, the space keeps evolving.
Marketers who want to succeed in SEO know to watch for the trends, statistics, and news that indicate where the industry is headed.
If you’re looking to ground yourself in modern SEO practices, this list of SEO statistics is a great place to start. Read on to explore some of the most relevant facts and figures that show where SEO is in 2025 and where it may be going.
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SEO statistics for industry growth and market trends
Despite the disruption caused by Google’s AI Overviews, SEO remains one of the best channels to drive traffic and leads. Consumers still turn to popular search platforms billions of times a day to answer all manner of questions—including ones they’ve never asked before!
Let’s start with some stats that prove SEO is still a robust marketing channel.
- The global SEO market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 8.3% from 2024-2030.
- While AI is certainly changing the SEO industry overall, 99% of marketing leaders still say that non-AI tools remain a part of their toolkit.
- Zero-click search, where users do not click on a single link on the SERPs page, is growing; over 58% of all Google queries in the US are zero-click searches.
- Google only displays ads on about 20% of all search results.
- Organic traffic accounts for 53% of all trackable traffic to websites; social media only drives 5% of site traffic.
- Google receives about 99,000 search queries per second.
- Google has long been the leading search engine. It currently accounts for just over 90% of all searches.
- Bing is the second-most-popular search engine, with nearly 4% of all searches each month happening on the Microsoft-owned platform.
- Gartner predicts that search engine volume will drop 25% by 2026 because of generative AI.
- Each day, 15% of Google searches are for completely new queries.
- Google is huge among Gen Z. Signed-in users between the ages of 18 and 24 represent the highest volume of search queries daily over all other age groups.
- Google’s search products generated over $144 billion in revenue for the business in Q1-3 of 2024.
- Google generates about 85 billion visits a month.
- The SEO industry’s market size is expected to hit nearly $107 billion in 2025.
- In the US, ecommerce revenues totaled nearly $107 billion in 2024.
- Businesses spend an average of between $500 and $7,500 per month on SEO.
- The average marketing budget has fallen since 2020, with CMOs reporting a budget that’s 7.7% of total revenue in 2024. That means less money to spend on SEO, too.
- 61% of small businesses are currently not investing in SEO, but 46% of those plan to do so in 2025.
- 71% of small businesses investing in SEO are satisfied with their results.
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SEO ROI and performance statistics
Similarly, investing in SEO continues to pay off. Consumers still see search engines as a go-to resource for information, and marketers still report massive long-term gains in implementing SEO strategies.
- A thought leadership SEO campaign, which invests in regular, strategic content creation, can deliver a 748% ROI.
- B2B companies see big returns on SEO investments; they generate 2x more revenue from organic search than any other channel.
- Seven out of 10 marketers say SEO is one of the most effective channels for driving sales.
- The top link in organic results on Google has an average click-through rate of nearly 28%.
- Only 0.67% of searchers click on results on the second page of Google, which illustrates the importance of ranking on that first page.
- Among marketers from enterprise-level organizations, 72% report that their SEO efforts are successful in driving marketing objectives, like increasing web traffic.
- 57% of surveyed in-house marketers say a lack of SEO skills under their own roof is their biggest hurdle.
- Nearly 97% of all websites get zero organic traffic from Google.
- People move quickly on Google—50% of searchers click on the results within nine seconds of their query.
- 65% of searchers still click on the “10 blue links” organic, first-page search results at some point following their query.
- Among surveyed B2B marketers, 60% say they use web traffic to measure success.
- The average length of videos that rank on the first page of YouTube results is just shy of 15 minutes.
- On YouTube, 68% of videos ranking on the first page of results are high-definition.
- Google is the #1 touchpoint consumers say helps them make smart, informed purchase decisions.
- 70% of social media users say they head to Google to do additional research on products they’ve seen on social media.
Mobile and local SEO statistics
For small businesses, mobile and local SEO reign supreme. Think about your own search habits: When you’re out on the road and need to get something quickly, what’s the first thing you do? Probably take out your phone and search for a business near you. And statistics show you’re not alone—mobile and local SEO searches regularly connect high-intent shoppers with local businesses.
- Google accounts for about 95% of all mobile searches in the US.
- The Google Maps app has a mobile reach of 59% among smartphone users in the US.
- “Near me” searches on Google Maps have grown 100% year-over-year globally.
- 21% of consumers use the internet to find a local business every single day.
- Highly rated businesses—those with four or more stars on Google—outrank those with lower ratings by a median of 11%.
- 31% of local-intent organic search results surface business directory pages.
- For transactional local search terms, 61% of SERPs results are business websites.
- Among local queries, 42% of searchers click on results within the Google Maps Pack.
Google 3-pack (aka Google Map Pack)
- Two in three US consumers make a decision about what they’re going to buy before they get to a store.
- Mobile search is the primary search location for 52% of all Americans. That number leaps up to 80% for Gen Z and 62% among millennials.
- Consumers rank Google (66%), Google Maps (45%), and a business’s own website (36%) as the top three most trusted sources for evaluating a local company online.
- Reading mostly negative reviews causes 63% of consumers to lose trust in a business.
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SEO and AI statistics
The specter looming over most SEO-related conversations in 2025 is AI. When ChatGPT and other generative AI tools burst on the scene in late 2023, many predicted that the death of SEO was imminent. Search engines would wither away, with people turning to AI answer engines like Perplexity and Gemini to answer all their queries. Lucky for all the SEO pros out there, that prediction has not yet proved correct. Instead, nimble marketers have discovered how to employ AI to improve their SEO tactics.
- Over 86% of SEO experts have integrated AI technology or tools into their strategies.
- 67% of small businesses are already using AI for content creation and SEO.
- Among the more than 2,600 businesses surveyed, 65% report better SEO results because of AI.
- 61% of marketers using AI for ranking and attracting organic traffic say they are “effective” or “very effective.”
- Most marketers think AI will help their cause—75% anticipate that AI-enabled search engines will positively impact their blogs.
- AI Overviews appear in up to 47% of all search results.
- On mobile devices, AI Overviews and featured snippets can take up over 75% of the real estate on the screen.
- 50% of the US adults responding to a 2024 survey said they’d trust AI search results more if the content was verified by a human.
- Google’s AI Overviews are reaching more than 1 billion searchers each month.
- 83% of marketers at companies with 200+ people report that their efforts to incorporate AI into their work are already driving better SEO performance.
- 82% of SEO experts plan to invest more in AI in the future, with their primary objectives being to improve performance and reduce repetitive tasks.
- On a scale of 1-10, the average SEO expert said their level of confidence in using AI tactics and strategies in their work was about 7.
- 59% of SEO pros say AI has influenced their planning and roadmap a little, while 21% say it’s sparked big changes.
On-page and technical SEO statistics
Google is notoriously tight-lipped about how, exactly, it ranks sites in search. But we’ve long known that technical elements like page load time and mobile friendliness play a role. These statistics shed some light on just how much (or how little) certain on-page and technical elements really impact SEO.
- An analysis of more than 2,300 websites found that Google rewrote over 61% of all meta titles. This often happens to address concerns with length (too long or too short), keyword repetition, and missing brand names.
- Google also rewrites meta descriptions; a survey of 192,656 web pages found Google rewrote nearly 63% of them.
- Google is more likely to rewrite meta-descriptions for long-tail keywords (65%) than for broad, high-volume keywords (60%).
- A technical SEO campaign, where an agency focuses on technical fixes and optimization, can result in a 117% ROI.
- URLs with words that are similar to the page’s keywords see a 45% higher click-through rate than URLs that contain no keywords.
- Nearly 60% of B2B marketers consider their blogs to be their most valuable channel.
- On average, companies with blogs produce 67% more leads per month than those without blogs.
- The average age of pages ranking in the top 10 spots on Google is 2-plus years old.
- Just over 25% of top-ranking pages don’t have any meta descriptions.
- Research by Ahrefs found no correlation between a web page’s Flesch Reading Score and its ranking position.
- A Backlinko analysis of 11.8 million Google searches found no correlation between page load speed and placement on the first page of Google SERPs.
- Similarly, they found no correlation between including a keyword in your title tag and first-page SERP placement.
- 28% of marketers cited technical debt as the biggest risk to their technical SEO success.
- SEO experts acknowledge that technical SEO can take time to work; 44% said it can take up to 3 months for changes to impact traffic.
- 97% of SEO pros say they use Google Search Console in their work, making it the most popular tool.
Off-page SEO and link-building statistics
SEO best practices don’t just happen on your own website. Building up backlinks—that is, getting your website linked to from a trusted, high-traffic site—bolsters your site’s standing in the eyes of consumers and search engine ranking algorithms.
- “Link rot,” when a link no longer directs to its intended page or file, is a pervasive issue. Over 66% of all links to sites in the past nine years are dead.
- Semrush’s backlink database is one of the largest out there; it contains more than 43 trillion links.
- Approximately 41% of enterprise-level marketers say link building is the hardest part of SEO.
- Nearly 75% of link builders pay for links, despite the practice violating Google’s spam policies.
- There is a direct correlation between experience and the rate of monthly link acquisition among link builders. Those with 5+ years of experience generate an average of 25 links per month, while those with less than a year built an average of seven links monthly.
- On average, top-ranking web pages get 5% to 14% more backlinks each month.
- Adding internal links can boost a page’s Google traffic to a point. URLs with 40-44 internal links saw four times as many clicks as URLs with 0-4 internal links. But Google traffic begins to decline after a URL hits 45-50 internal links.
- Link-builders who incorporate social media into their outreach see a 22% higher link-building rate.
- The top result on any Google search has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than the pages in positions 2-10.
- 95% of web pages have zero backlinks.
SEO statistics on voice search and other emerging technologies
Search engines don’t operate solely in the realm of text anymore. Today, consumers can use smart speakers and reverse-image searches to discover and purchase new products. If you’re not thinking about the emerging tech in search, you might miss out on opportunities to connect with these cutting-edge customers.
- Over 13% of people in the US use smart speakers to make purchases.
- Worldwide, 20% of internet users are turning to voice search.
- Gen Z will lead all other age groups in voice search usage by 2027. It’s projected that nearly 64% of Gen Zers will use voice search, with millennials coming in a close second at 62%.
- 13% of marketers plan to take advantage of voice search optimization in 2025.
- More than one in three Americans own a smart speaker.
- 36% of consumers have used a visual search tool, like Google Lens when shopping online.
- Nearly 75% of consumers say that text-based searches are inefficient at helping them find the products they want.
- Visual searches increased 70% year-over-year worldwide.
- Each month, Google gets 20 billion Lens searches, 4 billion of which are shopping-related.
- It was predicted that 80% of voice search queries in 2024 would be asked in a conversational way.
- Usage of descriptive keywords, like “best,” “free,” “top,” and “easy,” is expected to rise by 20% in voice search.
- More than 58% of voice searchers use the technology to find local businesses.
- 27% of users visit a local business’s website after conducting a voice search.
- 52% of smart speaker users worry that the technology could leave information about themselves or their homes vulnerable to hackers.
Apply these SEO statistics to your 2025 search strategy
These statistics give us a good idea of where SEO is headed in the coming months and years. Use them to test and adjust your strategy accordingly. The marketers who can stay a step ahead of emerging trends can continue to deliver results for their brands—-driving website traffic, getting discovered by new customers, and ultimately contributing to overall growth.
If you’d like to speak to an expert SEO team about how to improve your results in this shifting environment, contact us, and we’ll show you how we can help.