100+ Search Engine Marketing Statistics: Trends and Insights for 2025

Many businesses invest in search engine marketing! But most of them don’t know which tactics deliver results and which waste resources. Thus, they end up doing inefficient spending, poor targeting, and missing growth opportunities.

That’s where current Search Engine Marketing statistics come in. They show where users search, how they engage with results, and which channels produce the best ROI. 

So, let’s know these metrics!

100+ Key Search Engine Marketing Statistics at a Glance

In this section, we present over 105 search engine marketing statistics, each accompanied by its source link for your reference. By analysing the digital marketing statistics, you can make informed decisions on what to do and what to avoid for your business marketing on digital platforms. 

Search Engine Market Share

1. Google dominates with a global market share of 89.66% as of April 2025. [StateCounter]
2. Bing holds the second position with 3.88%, followed by Yandex at 2.53%, Yahoo! at 1.32%, DuckDuckGo at 0.84%, and Baidu at 0.72%. [StateCounter]

3. Google’s market share on mobile devices is the highest, at 93.89%. [Statista]
4. Google represented 79.1% of the search engine market on desktop devices in 2024. [Statista]
5. Google’s search engine indexes around 400 billion web pages. [Zyppy]

• Search dominance isn’t evenly spread worldwide. From Africa to North America, let’s see how Google search varies from one continent to another.

• The way people search online varies widely, and Google plays a huge role. Country wise search engine market share:

Basic Search Engine Statistics

6. 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. [Bright Edge] 
7. “Near Me” and “Where to buy” searches have grown 200% in the last two years. [Think with Google]
8. Among all the internet users, 62.8% search for information, 55% keep up to date with news and events, 45.2% research products and brands, and 35.4% research health issues and healthcare products. [Statista]

9. 46% of searches in the search engines have a local intent. [SERoundTable]
10.  15% of daily Google queries are completely new and have never been searched before. [Google]
11.  The first search result on Google typically gets a 9.28% click-through rate, with the second and third positions receiving 5.82% and 3.11%, respectively. [ResearchGate]
12.  Nearly 4 in 10 buyers (39%0 say a relevant search influenced their purchasing decision. [Think With Google]
13.  “YouTube” is the most searched term in both the United States and worldwide. [Ahrefs]
14.  Google processes over 99,000 searches per second. This becomes approximately 8.5 billion searches daily. [WPBeginner]

15.  91% of marketers say that SEO impacted their website performance positively. [Conductor]
16.  The number 1 Google’s organic search results get an average of 27.6% CTR. [Backlinko]
17.  The top 3 Google search results get 54.4% of all clicks. [Backlinko]
18.  Between organic and SERP features, 83.6% of results are organic in Google search. [Advanced Web Ranking]

Mobile and Voice Search Data

19.  76% of mobile users who search for something close to them end up visiting a local business within 24 hours. [Think With Google]
20.  Approximately 28% of nearby searches on mobile devices lead to an actual purchase. [Think With Google]  
21. 97.8% of internet users access the web via smartphones. [Statista]

22.  The rate of voice searches in the search engine is 27%. [Think with Google]
23.  Over 58% of customers search for local businesses using voice search. [Demand Sage]
24.  40.7% of voice search answers come from a featured snippet. [Backlinko] 

25.  The average voice search is 29 words long. [Backlinko]
26.  90% of smartphone users start researching without a fixed brand in mind. [Think with Google]
27.  1 in 3 smartphone users switch brands due to timely information. [Think with Google]
28.  Mobile search ads can boost unaided brand awareness by 46%.  [Think with Google]
29.  51% of smartphone users discover new brands through mobile search.  [Think with Google]
30.  56% of in-store shoppers used smartphones to research or shop while in-store. [Think with Google]
31.  Over half of users (53%) leave a mobile site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. [Think with Google]
32.  Voice now accounts for 1 in 5 (20%) searches in the Google App. [Think with Google]

Keyword-Based Search Engine Statistics

33.  95% of the U.S. keyword database consists of keywords with fewer than 10 monthly searches. [Ahrefs]

34.  Only 0.0008% of keywords receive more than 100,000 searches per month. [Ahrefs]
35.  91.45% of search volume estimates in Google Ads Keyword Planner are inflated. [Ahrefs]
36.  Google Ads Keyword Planner overestimates search volumes 54.28% of the time and is accurate about 45.22% of the time. [Ahrefs]
37.  46.08% of clicks in Google Search Console are on hidden terms. [Ahrefs]

38.  The top five organic listings in search engine results pages (SERPs) receive 69.1% of total clicks. [Up Inc.]
39.  In the US, more than 80% of search queries are made up of three or fewer words [Statista]
40.  More than 29% of keywords with over 10,000 monthly searches include three or more words [Ahrefs]
41.  Approximately 8% of all searches are formulated as questions [Moz]
42.  Nearly 25% of all search traffic occurs outside the top 100 million keywords! [Moz]

Paid Search Advertising and ROI in SEM

Paid search advertising remains a cornerstone of digital marketing strategies. Here are some key statistics:

43.  Paid advertising returns a minimum of 200% and up to 800% revenue in Google Ads. [Google Economic Impact]

44. The global digital advertising market is projected to reach $843 billion in 2025. [hostinger.in] 
45.  Google’s ad revenue in 2024 is 264.59 billion U.S. dollars. [Statista]
46.  Google’s ad revenue increased by 8.5% in Q1 2025 compared to Q1 2024. [The Keyword]

47.  SEO drives 1,000% more traffic than organic social media. [BrightEdge]
48.  53% of shoppers always research products using a search engine before making a purchase. Source
49.  88% of users who search for a local business on a mobile device visit or call that business within 24 hours. Source
50.  60% of marketers state that inbound (SEO, blog content, etc.) is their highest quality source of leads. [Hubspot]

51.  Google Ads has an average conversion rate of 4.40% on the search network and 0.57% in the display network. [WordStream]
52.  Bing Ads have an average conversion rate of 2.94% across all industries. [WordStream]

Local SEO Statistics

53.  About 63.6% of people are inclined to look at Google reviews, via Search or Maps, before heading to a business location. [ReviewTrackers]
54.  Nearly 58% of companies are missing out by not optimising their websites for local search. [ReviewTrackers]
55.  Around 88% of consumers say they’re more likely to choose a business that responds to every review it receives. [BrightLocal]

56.  Roughly 32% of SEO professionals consider the Google Business Profile to be the leading factor in determining map pack rankings. [BrightLocal]
57.  About 36% of SEOs believe on-page optimization has the biggest impact on rankings in local organic search. [BrightLocal]
58.  A business with a complete profile on Google Maps and Search is seen as 2.7 times more trustworthy by potential customers. [Google]

59.  Businesses with fully filled-out Google profiles are 70% more likely to receive visits and 50% more likely to generate sales interest. [Google]

Video Marketing Statistics 2025

According to a survey by WYZOWL, video marketing has a great impact on digital marketing strategy. Here’s what they found. 

60.  91% of businesses utilize video as a marketing tool, maintaining an all-time high since tracking began in 2016.
61.  88% of video marketers consider video an essential part of their overall strategy.

62.  68% of marketers who don’t use video plan to start in 2025.
63.  89% of consumers express a desire to see more online videos from brands in 2025.
64.  82% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service after watching a brand’s video.
65.  88% of video marketers report that video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service.
66.  87% of marketers say that video marketing has helped them increase sales.
67.  82% of marketers agree that video has increased dwell time on their website.
68.  66% of marketers report that video marketing has helped them reduce support queries.

69.  73% of people prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product or service, compared to other methods like reading articles or viewing infographics.
70.  94% of people feel that video is a good way to build confidence during the sales process.
71.  91% believe video is effective in proactively overcoming objections in the sales process.
72.  89% think their business would benefit from using more video in the sales process.
73.  The most effective video marketing platform, according to marketers, is Instagram, with a 61% success rate. YouTube was omitted from the survey, but historically, it was the most widely used platform with a 78% usage rate in 2024.

74.  The least widely used video marketing platform is Snapchat: 8%
75.  The average business publishes 18 videos per month.
76.  91% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.
77.  77% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy or download a piece of software or app by watching a video.
78.  44% prefer watching a short video to learn about a product or service. 

Industry-Specific SEM Data

Different industries experience varying SEM performance metrics. Here is a glance at it, you can see. 

79.  The Legal Industry has the highest average CPC for Google Ads at $9.21. [WordStream]

80.  Real Estate and Arts & Entertainment Industries have the lowest average CPC for search on Google Ads at $1.55. [WordStream]
81.  The Careers and Employment Industry has the highest conversion rate on Bing Ads at 6.81%. [WordStream]
82.  45% of companies allocate between $100 and $10,000 each month to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. [WebFX]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and SEO Marketing Statistics

Since AI is expanding and embarrassing the industries, it has a huge impact on the digital marketing and SEO industry. Here you see a glimpse of the impact of AI in digital marketing. 

83.  88% of marketers use AI in their daily work. [Survey Monkey] 
84.  Around 69% of marketers are actively using ChatGPT in their workflow. [Authority Hacker]
85.  Approximately 65.8% of people believe AI-generated content is as good as or better than human-written material. [Authority Hacker]
86.  About 85.1% of marketers now rely on AI tools for article writing tasks. [Authority Hacker]

87.  Nearly 32.9% of businesses have already automated certain human tasks using AI solutions. [Authority Hacker]
88. Only 30.1% of marketers think AI will have a negative effect on search traffic over the next five years. [Authority Hacker]
89.  Roughly 63% of AI users identify content inaccuracy as a major problem. [Authority Hacker]

90.  71% of marketers use AI tools to generate content ideas, 70% for brainstorming, and 40% for crafting overall content strategies. [Siege Media]
91.  Around 57.2% of marketers have thought about replacing internal or outsourced work with AI tools. [Superpath]
92.  48% of the top news websites across ten countries are blocking OpenAI’s web crawlers, while 24% are doing the same with Google’s AI bot. [Reuters Institute]

93.  There has been a 33% drop in writing jobs since the launch of ChatGPT. [Bloomberry]

Technical SEO Statistics

The technical SEO statistics will help you to understand how particular technical SEO strategies work for SEO marketing. This discloses some new views as well. 

94.  Google changes over 61% of meta titles, usually due to issues like length, keyword stuffing, or missing brand names. [ZYPPY]
95.  Nearly 63% of meta descriptions get rewritten by Google based on an analysis of almost 200,000 pages. [Ahrefs]
96.  Meta descriptions are edited more often for long-tail searches (65%) than for broader terms (60%). [Ahrefs]
97.  Technical SEO fixes can deliver a return on investment of around 117%. 

[FirstPageSage]

98.  URLs containing keywords closely related to the page topic earn 45% more clicks than those without. [Backlinko]
99.  The typical page ranking in Google’s top 10 is over two years old. [Ahrefs]
100. More than 25% of top-ranking pages are missing a meta description entirely. [Ahrefs]

101. Readability scores (Flesch Reading) don’t appear to impact Google rankings. [Ahrefs]
102. 28% of marketers view technical debt as the biggest obstacle to SEO performance. [AIRA]
103. 44% of SEO professionals say technical SEO usually takes up to three months to influence traffic. [AIRA]
104. Google Search Console is the go-to tool for 93% of SEO specialists. [AIRA]

How to Use These Stats to Improve Your SEM Strategy (Just for You)

Now, here’s how to actually use them to make your search engine marketing smarter and more effective.

1. Use AI to Save Time and Get Better Results

Managing ads manually? That’s exhausting and, honestly, unnecessary now. AI tools can take care of bid adjustments, timing, and even audience targeting for you.

If you’re in e-commerce, you can automatically push the right products based on trends.

In real estate? Use AI to target people searching for homes in specific zip codes.

Finance or insurance? Let automation react to changing rates and user behavior faster than you ever could.

2. Focus on Mobile—Because That’s Where Everyone Is

Your audience isn’t sitting at a desk. They’re on phones—shopping, searching, booking services.

Retailers: People compare prices while standing in the store.

Online course creators: Mobile-first users check programs during commutes.

Local services: Emergency searches like “plumber near me” happen on mobile.

So, make sure your landing pages load fast, buttons are thumb-friendly, and your forms don’t require a microscope.

3. Optimize for Voice Search—Because People Talk to Their Phones Now

More than half of users ask their phone where to eat, shop, or find a service. If your ads or website don’t sound like something a human would say, you’re missing out.

Restaurants and clinics: Think “best tacos near me” or “dentist open now.”

Law firms: People search stuff like “do I need a lawyer if I got a DUI?”

Use casual, conversational phrases. Add FAQs on your landing pages that match real voice queries.

4. Don’t Just Rely on Google Ads

Google is great—but it’s not the only game in town. Bing and other platforms might surprise you.

If you’re in finance or real estate, Bing has strong conversion rates and less competition.

Recruitment agencies: Bing’s older, professional user base is perfect for job ads.

Try spreading a bit of your budget to platforms like Bing, LinkedIn, or even YouTube Shorts if you’re into video. Start small—test, learn, repeat.

5. Track ROI—Don’t Just Hope for the Best

Throwing money at ads without knowing what’s working? That’s a great way to burn cash.

Lawyers: Your CPC is high (like $9+), so make sure those clicks turn into calls.

SaaS companies: Measure the full journey—not just who clicks, but who becomes a paying user.

Retail/ecom: Look beyond traffic; focus on how much each ad makes you.

Set up conversion tracking. Run A/B tests. Use tools that track what’s actually moving the needle.

Wrapping Up

Google still leads the way in search. Most people use it to find what they need, but mobile and voice searches are growing fast. That means your audience isn’t just typing—they’re talking to their phones while on the move.

To succeed, you need to adapt. Use AI to save time and target smarter. Don’t rely only on Google Ads—test other platforms where your audience might be.

When you follow the data from these search engine marketing statistics, you’ll make smarter decisions and see better outcomes.