Branded or unbranded queries, 1 or more than 4-word keywords, you name it, there were no significant spikes in CTR when comparing Q3 to Q2 values.

However, there’s definitely more than meets the eye when drilling down to the industry level and when segmenting the data from the search intent perspective.

Google is constantly testing new ways of distributing featured snippets and organic results, which determine users to click on a different listing. This shift in users’ behavior when searching translates into inevitable changes in each listing’s clickthrough rate.

Btw, we’re covering the subject of how SERP features affect your CTR in Google organic search at SMX Next, online November 15-16. So, make sure you grab your free pass to deepen your knowledge about this topic.

And now let’s focus on the outcome, by looking at how the CTR values shaped in the third quarter of the year compared to the previous one.

Search intent

After the previous quarter’s drop in CTR, the clickthrough rate for commercial queries (containing words such as buy, price, etc.) got on the rising slope this time. Here, the websites ranked first experienced a 1.97 pp increase in CTR on desktop searches. 

As for informational queries (containing words such as what, when, where, how, etc.), the websites ranked first gained 1.38 pp in CTR on desktop queries.

Industries

Now let’s jump to the industries section, where, just like in the previous quarterly studies, we’ll correlate the changes in CTR to the ones in search demand to better estimate the potential traffic fluctuations.

This CTR report will contain two separate sections, based on the search demand’s evolution.

A. Industries that experienced an increase in search demand

For the second quarter in a row, the highest decrease in clickthrough rate for a single position was recorded in the Law, Government, & Politics market. Here, the websites ranked first on desktop recorded a 3.47 pp drop in CTR. 

On mobile, the loss affected the websites ranked first also, which witnessed a 2.37 pp decline in clickthrough rate. At the same time, the overall industry’s impressions increased by +2.96%.

With no real change for desktop queries, the websites ranked first in the News industry witnessed a 1.11 pp growth in clickthrough rates on mobile. Surprisingly, the fluctuations were higher at the bottom of the SERPs, with the websites ranked between the 17th and 20th positions losing a combined 6.74 pp in CTR. On the other hand, the search demand grew slightly for this industry, by +7.51%.

Here’s a graphical representation of the changes in the two industries mentioned above:

B. Industries where the search demand dropped

After two consecutive quarters with declining CTR values on mobile devices, the Careers industry got on the rising slope this time. Here, the websites ranked first on mobile devices experienced a 1.41 pp increase in CTR, while the total number of impressions decreased by -12.63% in Q3 compared to Q2.

The last time the Personal Finance industry made it into the quarterly CTR report, it was associated with the highest decrease in clickthrough rate of that period. Tables turn and the industry managed to record an increase of 1.07 pp in CTR for the websites ranked first on desktop. In reverse, the market’s search demand registered an overall -8.71% drop.

As for the Real Estate category, the search demand decreased on a small scale (-2.93%) and the CTR values fluctuated only on mobile devices. More precisely, websites ranked second in mobile SERPs registered a 0.93 pp drop in clickthrough rate.

Despite the drop in search demand (-17.84%), the websites ranked first in the Family & Parenting industry recorded a 2.08 pp increase in CTR on queries made from desktop devices. 

While the search demand dropped in the Hobbies & Interests market (-44.16%), websites ranked first on desktop devices registered almost an entire percentage point growth in CTR (0.90 pp to be more precise).

A similar trend occurred in the Food & Drink category, where the CTR values for the websites ranked first registered an increase of 0.93 pp on desktop and 0.88 pp on mobile devices. Nevertheless, the total number of impressions for this industry went in the opposite direction, recording a -5.52% drop.

With no major changes since Q4 2021, the websites ranked first in the Shopping industry recorded a growth of 0.96 pp in CTR on desktop queries. On the other hand, the search demand for this industry registered losses when compared to the previous quarter (-9.39% to be more precise).

And now let’s jump to the industry with the highest increase in clickthrough rate for a single position: the Business one. Here, the CTR for websites ranked first on queries made from desktop devices grew, on average, by 1.91 pp, while on mobile, the changes reached a remarkable 2.24 pp growth. However, the industry’s overall impressions dropped by -3.15% in Q3 compared to Q2.

The highest decrease in impressions (-50.36%) recorded by our search demand tool was for the Travel industry. As for the CTR values, after two dormant quarters, they experienced changes once again. Surprisingly, websites ranked first weren’t influenced by the changes, while those ranked in the second position in desktop SERPs registered a 2.90 pp drop in CTR.

The Science industry continued its CTR decline, which began in the previous quarter, for the websites ranked in the first two positions on mobile devices, and even more, the drop extended to desktop devices, as well, during Q3. Therefore, websites ranking in these first two positions on mobile got a combined decrease in clickthrough rate of 5.26 pp (2.26 pp for those ranked first, and 2.99 pp for those ranked in the second position), while on desktop, the combined drop equaled 5.00 pp (1.83 pp for those ranked first, and 3.17 pp for those ranked in the second position). The industry’s overall impressions decreased a bit, by -1.13%.

It’s been a year already since the Education market last recorded fluctuations in clickthrough rate and it was about time for it to make it into this quarter’s report. Here, the websites ranked first on desktop registered a 1.85 pp decrease in clickthrough rate, while the industry’s overall impressions dropped by -11.42%.

The first four positions in the Pets market experienced a combined 4.46 pp decrease in CTR on desktop and no less than a 9.88 pp drop on mobile devices. Coupled with a decline of -14.47% in search demand, it’s highly probable that the websites ranked in those four positions noticed some loss in organic traffic.

Sports is the last one to make it into this quarter’s group of industries where clickthrough rate variations were recorded, and the search demand declined. The number of impressions decreased by -12.30%, while the CTR for websites ranked first on desktop queries increased by 1.39 pp.

Here’s a visual recap of the changes mentioned above:

That’s it for…the third quarter

In what might have seemed a quiet quarter from the clickthrough rate perspective, we found out that there still were winning and losing industries, in the end. The websites ranked first on desktop for commercial and informational queries were also affected by the CTR changes, so make sure to reassess this metric regularly to discover if the traffic changes are tied to it.

See you with the analysis of the last quarter of the year compiled against this one. Until then, stay safe and healthy!

Not to mention the way searchers are interacting with these new search engine result pages. For example, recent studies show that about 40% of young people (Gen Z) use TikTok or Instagram as search engines, instead of Google for some discovery purposes. It should come as no surprise that zoomers (that’s how Generation Z is colloquially known) might behave differently when searching on Google.

So let’s best focus on effects, on how user behavior shaped the CTR values in the second quarter of the year when compared to the previous one.

All searches

At a global level, the changes affected only the mobile queries, where the websites ranked first registered a 1.45 pp decrease in CTR.

Branded vs. Unbranded

The declining trend in CTR for the websites ranked first on mobile queries was reflected in both the branded and unbranded queries.

More precisely, for those searches containing specific brand or business names, websites ranked in the first position experienced a 1.27 pp decline in CTR.

As for the unbranded queries, the drop in CTR equaled 1.56 pp for the websites ranked first for the searches made from mobile devices.

Search intent

Websites ranked in the first two positions for informational queries recorded a combined 2.57 pp loss in CTR on mobile (1.53 pp for those ranked first and 1.04 for those ranked second). On desktop, nevertheless, the changes went in the opposite direction, affecting the websites ranked first only, which witnessed almost 1.26 pp growth in clickthrough rate.

Drops in clickthrough rate values were recorded for commercial queries (those containing words such as price, pay, buy, etc.) as well, with websites ranked first, losing 1.27 pp on desktop queries.

As for location queries (containing words such as near, from, nearby, directions, maps, etc.), the websites ranked first lost on average 1.65 pp in CTR on desktop searches.

Keyword length

Regardless of the number of words a keyword has, our CTR tool recorded drops on almost all fronts on mobile queries as follows:

• for 1-word queries, the change wasn’t quite visible for those websites ranked first, while for those in the second position, the loss equaled 1.09 pp
• for queries containing more than 2 words, the most significant changes occurred for the websites ranked first. More precisely, for 2-word searches, the loss equaled 1.37 pp, for 3-word queries, the registered loss accounted for 1.42 pp, and for searches containing four or more keywords, the decline was 1.67 pp.

Industries

Now let’s jump to the industries section, where, just like in the previous quarterly studies, we’ll correlate the changes in CTR to the ones in search demand to better estimate the potential traffic fluctuations.

This CTR report will contain two separate sections, based on the search demand’s evolution.

A. Industries where the search demand increased

With no major changes since Q4 2021, the websites ranked first in the Technology & Computing industry recorded a drop of 1.07 pp in CTR on mobile queries. On the other hand, the search demand for this industry recorded growth when compared to the previous quarter (+20.66% to be more precise).

Being the industry to record the highest increase in CTR in the previous quarter, Family & Parenting got on the falling slope this time. 

On desktop, the websites affected were the ones ranked first, which witnessed a 1.34 pp loss. The decline was even steeper on mobile, with the websites ranked in the first five positions experiencing a combined 9.94 pp decrease in CTR (3.28 pp for those ranked in the first position, 2.26 pp for those ranked second, 1.56 pp for those ranked third, 1.66 pp for those ranked fourth, and 1.18 pp for the ones in the fifth spot).

At the same time, the industry’s overall search demand went in the opposite direction, increasing by +11.75%.

And now let’s jump to the industry with the highest decrease in clickthrough rate for a single position: the Law, Government, & Politics one. Here, the CTR for websites ranked first on queries made from desktop devices dropped, on average, by 3.33 pp. 

On the other hand, on mobile, the decline affected the first 4 positions, which recorded a combined 6.66 pp drop. However, the industry’s overall impressions increased by +5.39% in Q2 compared to Q1.

With no major changes since Q3 2021, the websites ranked first on queries made from desktop devices in the Business industry, grew, on average, by 1.04 pp. Combined with a +4.76% increase in search demand, it’s highly probable that these websites recorded an increased amount of organic traffic.

A similar trend occurred in the Hobbies & Interests industry, where just like in the Business market, after two dormant quarters, the clickthrough rate values experienced changes once again. Here, the websites ranked in the first two positions recorded drops in CTR on both desktop (3.24 pp combined) and mobile queries (3.72 pp combined). On a more positive note, this market registered the highest growth in search demand of the quarter: no less than +21.26%.

With no real change for desktop queries, the first two websites ranked in the Shopping industry witnessed a combined 2.40 pp loss in clickthrough rates on mobile (1.35 pp for those ranked first and 1.05 for those ranked second). However, the total number of impressions slightly increased, by +9.93%.

The websites ranked in the first two positions in the Science industry recorded a combined 3.48 pp loss in CTR on mobile (1.88 pp for those ranked first, and 1.60 pp for those ranked in the second position). On desktop, the changes affected the websites ranked third only, which witnessed a 1.14 pp growth in clickthrough rate. The industry’s overall impressions increased a bit, by +2.10%.

As for the Society industry, the clickthrough rates for the websites ranked first on desktop registered a 1.75 pp decline, while on mobile, only the websites ranked in the second position were influenced by the changes, recording a 1.26 drop. Nevertheless, the industry’s overall search demand went in the opposite direction, increasing by +17.91%.

Last but not least, let’s have a look at the Sports market, which recorded a drop in CTR on mobile devices only. For these queries, the websites ranked first witnessed a 1.07 pp drop, while this industry’s overall search demand increased by +7.61%.

Here’s a visual round-up of the CTR evolution for the industries mentioned above:

B. Industries that experienced a drop in search demand

The first five positions in the Real Estate industry experienced a combined 9.77 pp decrease in CTR on mobile (3.21 pp for those ranked in the first position, 2.22 pp for those ranked second, 1.67 pp for those ranked third, 1.55 pp for and 1.11 pp for the ones in the fifth spot). Coupled with a decrease of -12.66% in search demand, it’s highly probable that the websites ranked in those five positions noticed some loss in organic traffic.

The decline that started during the previous quarter deepened in the Careers industry, affecting not only the websites ranked first on mobile queries but also those ranked between second and fourth positions. Strictly speaking, the websites ranked in the first four positions on mobile lost a combined 5.54 pp in CTR as follows: 1.66 pp for those ranked in the first position, 1.24 pp for those ranked second, 1.54 pp for those ranked third, and 1.10 pp for the ones in the fourth spot.

On the other hand, but on desktop this time, only the websites ranked first were affected, experiencing a 1.19 pp drop in CTR, while the industry’s global number of impressions decreased by -10.14%.

The Health & Fitness market recorded losses, especially on mobile devices: 1.94 pp for websites ranked first and 5.73 pp for the top four websites combined. On desktop, the change could be observed, especially for the websites ranked first as they lost, on average, 1.93 pp in CTR. As for the search demand, the industry’s overall number of impressions decreased by -4.92%.

The Food & Drink market was also affected at the top of the SERP, where the websites ranked first registered a 1.55 pp drop in CTR on desktop and 1.83 pp decline on mobile. Here, the search demand decreased by -20.45%.

It’s time to turn our attention to the highest growth for a single position in CTR: the Arts & Entertainment market. Websites ranked in the first position experienced a 1.96 pp boost in CTR on desktop devices. 

On the other hand, still on desktop queries, those ranked second experienced a 1.03 pp drop, while those in the third spot registered a 1.24 pp decline. In contrast to the growth record achieved this quarter, this industry’s search demand decreased by -30.11%.

Desktop and mobile CTR values went in opposite directions this time around in the Education market, for the websites ranked first as follows: on desktop, the growth in clickthrough rate was 1.67 pp, while on mobile, the drop equaled 1.10 pp. Concurrently, the number of impressions for this industry declined steeply, by -24.51%.

The highest decrease in impressions (-36.18%) recorded by our search demand tool was for the Pets industry. As for the CTR values, interestingly, the websites’ positions influenced by the changes were quite atypical. Those ranked second in SERPs registered a 1.70 pp drop in CTR on desktop, while on mobile, the changes in CTR affected the websites ranked fourth, which witnessed a 1.13 pp drop.

One last market where the search demand dropped (by -6.42%) is Automotive. At the same time, the CTR values went in the same direction, at least for the websites ranked first, which registered a 1.32 pp drop on desktop and a 2.71 pp decrease on mobile queries.

Here’s a graphical representation of the changes in all eight industries mentioned above:

That’s it for…the second quarter

As you might have noticed, most of the changes occurred on mobile devices, and in most cases, they translated into drops in clickthrough rate. Quite contrary to the popular opinion that Google’s continuous scrolling on mobile searches would automatically bring more traffic to the websites, we noticed that in reality, it’s quite the opposite, which stresses the importance of assessing the CTR values regularly.

Only this way you can try and understand scenarios such as drops in traffic, although the rankings remained unchanged, and going further, you can even make some forecasts on how much traffic you can expect, based on the most recent CTR values evolution.

I’ll see you with the analysis of the third quarter of the year compiled against this one. Until then, stay safe and healthy!

Visual Stories

Speaking of changes in SERPs anatomy, a new feature called ‘Visual Stories’ is now available on Google Mobile results. After a long period of testing, it looks like Google is now displaying this feature more prominently in mobile results from the US.

We treated the impact of Visual Stories in a dedicated blog post, and as expected, we made this new result type available for tracking in the free organic CTR tool.

Now let’s look at how user behavior shaped the CTR values in the first quarter of the year compared to the last quarter of 2021.

Branded vs. Unbranded queries

The websites ranked first for the searches mentioning a specific brand or business name were affected on both desktop and mobile queries. On desktop, the increase in CTR equaled 0.68 pp, while on mobile, the ascending trend recorded a 0.97 pp growth.

On the other hand, but for unbranded queries this time, the CTR changes went the other way round. Here, the websites ranked first on desktop witnessed a drop in CTR by 0.59 pp, while on mobile the recorded decline was 0.30 pp.

Search intent

When looking at either commercial, location, or informational queries, the highest variations in CTR were registered on desktop, and surprisingly for the websites ranked in the second position.

More precisely, the CTR grew by 1.04 pp for commercial queries (those containing words such as price, pay, buy, etc.) and by 0.89 pp for location searches (containing words such as near, nearby, from, directions, route, maps, etc.).

However, the highest change in clickthrough rate occurred for informational queries, where the websites ranked second on desktop witnessed a 1.60 pp decrease.

Industries

Now let’s move on to the industries section, where, just like in our previous quarterly CTR studies, we’ll correlate the changes in CTR to the ones in search demand. Presuming the rankings remain steady, this section is aimed at better estimating the potential traffic fluctuations.

This chapter will be divided into two separate sections, based on the search demand’s evolution.

A. Industries that experienced an increase in search demand

The Law, Government, & Politics industry starts the year in force, with growth on all fronts. With a global +12.69% increase in search demand, websites ranked first recorded a 1.82 pp boost on desktop and a 1.46 pp growth on searches made from mobile devices.

The Careers industry continued its CTR decline, which began in the previous quarter, for the websites ranked first on mobile devices. Therefore, websites ranking first on mobile got an average decrease in clickthrough rate of 1.54 pp. At the same time, the search demand stopped from falling and seemed to recover, since it recorded a slight increment of +9.44%.

And now let’s jump to the industry with the highest increase in clickthrough rate for a single position: the Family & Parenting one. Here, the CTR for websites ranked first on queries made from desktop devices grew, on average, by 1.95 pp, while on mobile, the changes reached a 1.13 pp growth. At the same time, the overall industry’s impressions increased by +14.25%.

Being the industry to record the highest increase in CTR in the previous quarter, Automotive got on the falling slope this time. The websites affected were the ones ranked first, which witnessed a 2.20 pp loss on mobile queries only, while the industry’s overall search demand went in the opposite direction, increasing by +16.76%.

As for the Real Estate industry, websites ranked first on desktop queries recorded a 1.37 pp growth in CTR on desktop, while those ranked in the second position experienced a 1.30 pp boost in clickthrough rate. At the same time, the total number of impressions increased by +2.23%.

Despite the slight growth in search demand (+6.90%), the websites ranked first in the Society industry recorded a 1.41 pp drop in CTR on desktop devices and a 2.85 pp decrease for the queries made from mobile devices.

It’s time to turn our attention to the first quarter’s highest decline in clickthrough rate: the Personal Finance market. Here, the websites ranked first recorded a 3.60 pp loss in CTR on desktop, while on mobile, the loss in clickthrough rate equaled almost 2 pp (1.99 pp more precisely). At the same time, the overall industry’s impressions increased by +10.25%.

The highest increase in impressions (+26.85%) recorded by our search demand tool was for the News market. Nevertheless, the CTR values went in the opposite direction, and interestingly, the websites ranked for queries made from mobile devices weren’t influenced by the changes. However, the top two websites in desktop SERPs registered a combined 4.14 pp drop in CTR (1.96 pp for those ranked first and 2.18 pp for those ranked in the second position).

As for the Science industry, the clickthrough rates for the top two websites registered a combined growth of 3.73 pp on mobile, while on desktop, only the websites ranked in the second position were influenced by the changes, recording a 1.46 pp growth. These changes in CTR coupled with a growth of +25.59% in this industry’s overall search demand might translate into a boost in traffic for those websites affected by the changes.

Health & Fitness is the last one to make it into this quarter’s group of industries where clickthrough rate variations were recorded, and the search demand increased. The number of impressions increased by +15.99%, while the CTR for the websites ranked second decreased only on desktop devices by 1.49 pp, while on mobile the values remained quite steady.

Here’s a visual recap of all the changes mentioned above:

B. Industries where the search demand dropped

In the absence of events such as Black Friday and the holiday season, like in the previous quarter, it was expected that the search demand would decrease in the Shopping industry, and so it did: our search demand tool recorded a -30.14% drop in impressions. As for the CTR values, websites ranked first on desktop registered a 1.59 pp decrease.

With no major changes since Q3 2021, the websites ranked in the first two positions in the Style & Fashion industry recorded a combined 2.43 pp growth in CTR on desktop (1.22 pp for those ranked first and 1.21 pp for those ranked in the second position). At the same time, the overall industry’s impressions decreased by -19.93%.

A similar trend occurred in the Pets industry, where just like in the Style & Fashion market, after a dormant quarter, the clickthrough rate values experienced changes once again.

Here, the CTR for websites ranked first on mobile devices decreased by 1.87 pp, while no significant changes were recorded on desktop. At the same time, this industry’s overall search demand decreased by -17.10%.

Last but not least, let’s have a look at the Home & Garden market, which recorded a drop in CTR on mobile devices only. For these queries, the websites ranked in the second position witnessed a 1.23 pp drop, while this industry’s overall search demand decreased by -6.70%.

Here’s a graphical representation of the changes in all four industries mentioned above:

That’s it for…the first quarter

As we’ve seen, recently it’s been the Visual Stories feature that appeared in search engine results, and who knows what Google holds in store in the future? This continuous reshaping of SERPs leads to shifts in users’ behavior and today’s ‘guaranteed’ traffic might be different than the actual received one.

So make sure to include checking the organic click share values’ evolution into your routine to better calibrate your expectations.

And I’ll see you with the analysis of the second quarter of the year compiled against this one. Until then, stay safe and healthy!

• Does web page performance matter for ranking in Google organic search?
• Which of the Core Web Vitals metrics correlate with first page search engine rankings?

In March 2022, Google announced that the page experience update for Desktop has been fully rolled out so we thought it would be interesting to see its impact compared to the Mobile update that happened in May 2021.

With the help of our free tool Wattspeed, we uncovered some interesting findings that I’m about to share with you today.

Summary of Our Most Interesting Findings

1. The higher the ranking in Google, the lower the LCP metric is.
2. 39% of analyzed web pages passed the Core Web Vitals metrics, while the other 61% were below the threshold.
3. 80% of the pages that pass Core Web Vitals on Desktop also pass them on Mobile.
4. The Core Web Vitals is a ranking factor, but it’s not as important as links, content, or search intent.

The above data is based on more than 3 million pages analyzed by this study. Read on to find out all the details about each of our findings.

You can also check out the entire Core Web Vitals Study on the Wattspeed website.

What are Core Web Vitals?

The Core Web Vitals, or CWV in short, is a set of metrics that measure real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of a web page.

They are a subset of the page experience signals, which measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page.  

The data that Google uses to rank websites in organic search comes from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) which is a public dataset of real user experience data on millions of websites.

It measures three Core Web Vitals metrics:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• First Input Delay (FID)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

These metrics focus on three aspects of the user experience: loading, interactivity, and visual stability:

In May 2021, page experience for mobile devices became a ranking signal. Almost a year later, in March 2022, Google announced that the page experience update for Desktop has been fully rolled out.

For more news about Google updates that affect search and rankings, I recommend you watch the amazing Google Search News channel. Here’s a link to the latest episode in which John talks about this latest update, which rolled out in March 2022.

This Desktop update includes all the current signals of the mobile version of the page experience update, except the mobile-friendliness part:

Google has also compiled a set of answers for anyone who has questions about these metrics in this comprehensive Core Web Vitals FAQ.

How Many Sites pass the Core Web Vitals metrics?

We analyzed around 3 million web pages and found that for both mobile and desktop pages, about 39% passed the Core Web Vitals metrics, while the other 61% were below the threshold.

What is interesting though is that the percentage of the websites that pass the CWV is higher for the highest ranking positions in Google organic search.

The CrUX report does not show CWV scores for pages that have not met minimum traffic thresholds. Thus we found a lot of pages in Google’s top 10 results that did not have any CrUX data associated with them.

Are the Core Web Vitals correlated with the ranking position in Google search results?

It is important to start by saying that some of the studies that we do in the SEO industry try to correlate certain factors with the actual Google rankings. However, most of the time, “correlation is not causation”, which means that just because two things correlate does not necessarily mean that one causes the other. So take the data below with a grain of salt and don’t jump to conclusions immediately.

That being said, there are some interesting charts below, so let’s dive right in.

Let’s look at each of the three Core Web Vitals and see if there is any correlation between them and ranking in organic google search:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures loading performance. For a good user experience, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds since the page first starts loading.

It looks like none of the 3 million pages that were part of this study (which were found in the top 20 results of Google) have an average LCP lower than 2.5 seconds:

However, what is interesting, is that the charts above clearly show that, the higher the ranking in Google, the lower the LCP metric is.

First Input Delay (FID): measures interactivity. To provide a good user experience, pages should have an FID of 100 milliseconds or less.

The good news is that all the pages that we tested (which are also in the top 20 results) have an FID that is less than 100 ms. However, the difference in FID values between the Top 20 rankings isn’t that great and there is no clear correlation between FID and ranking positions:

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): measures visual stability. To provide a good user experience, pages should maintain a CLS of 0.1 or less. There is a slight visual trend here that shows rankings in top positions have a lower CLS, but the difference between the CLS values isn’t that great to justify a clear correlation.

Core Web Vitals by Industry

Not all web pages are created equal. Most of them use different technologies and they also have different features. For this reason, the Core Web Vitals metrics differ a lot for different pages.

When looking at the average results of the entire set of 3 million web pages that were analyzed in this study, it’s hard to get the whole story. So we decided to break down the entire set of pages by industry, to see how these pages perform with regard to Core Web Vitals for each industry.

Here’s the percentage of pages that pass the Core Web Vitals on Desktop broken down by industry:

And here’s the percentage of pages that pass the Core Web Vitals on Mobile broken down by industry:

The “Arts & Entertainment” section seems interesting because 74% of the pages that belong to this industry pass the Core Web Vitals on Mobile, but only 23% of these pages pass the Core Web Vitals on Desktop.

This is probably due to the fact that on Desktop, especially in the “Arts & Entertainment” industry, most pages display videos that take a longer time to load. On mobile, the same pages might scale down this video to an image instead.

When we look at each Core Web Vital metric separately, we can see that the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is the metric that most of these pages fail at:

And if we look at the LCP metric broken down by search result type, we can see that Video is the one responsible for the largest LCP score for most websites:

Check out the entire Core Web Vitals Study on the Wattspeed website for more detailed charts of Core Web Vitals broken down by industry, device and search result type.

Are the Core Web Vitals a major ranking signal?

The short answer is no. However, they become important when competing pages in search score well for all the other important factors. Read below for the long answer.

Page experience and Core Web Vitals are just some of the many factors that affect how Google ranks web pages in organic search. Some of them are more important than others and the formula was not made public.

John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, while talking about the May 2021 update said that, even though these performance factors will be used for ranking, they will not catapult your website from page ten to number one position. And that content relevance is more important than Core Web Vitals scores:

John Mueller

Search Advocate at Google

So just because your website is faster with regards to Core Web Vitals than some competitors doesn’t necessarily mean that come May you will jump to position number one in the search results.

We still require that relevance is something that should be kind of available on the site. It should make sense for us to show the site in the search results because, as you can imagine, a really fast website might be one that’s completely empty. But that’s not very useful for users.

It’s useful to keep that in mind when it comes to Core Web Vitals. It is something that users notice. It is something that we will start using for ranking. But it’s not going to change everything completely.

John Mueller, Google SEO office-hours – Feb 26, 2021

Some people from Reddit were skeptical about Core Web Vitals and their power over how Google ranks web pages in organic search results:

“Anyone else not buying Core Web Vitals? I just find it hard to believe that this actually becomes a greater part of the ranking algo. Has anyone seen dramatic gains or decreases based on it so far?“

“If two pieces of content are equally high quality and relevant to the search term and all the other ranking factors are equal, but one site has better core web vitals, it will rank higher.

I imagine it’s quite rare for two articles to be equal on all other factors so I think that’s why we don’t see much impact from it.”

And here’s the answer from John Mueller:

John Mueller

Search Advocate at Google

It is a ranking factor, and it’s more than a tie-breaker, but it also doesn’t replace relevance.

Depending on the sites you work on, you might notice it more, or you might notice it less. As an SEO, a part of your role is to take all of the possible optimizations and figure out which ones are worth spending time on. Any SEO tool will spit out 10s or 100s of “recommendations”, most of those are going to be irrelevant to your site’s visibility in search. Finding the items that make sense to work on takes experience.

The other thing to keep in mind with core web vitals is that it’s more than a random ranking factor, it’s also something that affects your site’s usability after it ranks (when people actually visit). If you get more traffic (from other SEO efforts) and your conversion rate is low, that traffic is not going to be as useful as when you have a higher conversion rate (assuming UX/speed affects your conversion rate, which it usually does). CWV is a great way of recognizing and quantifying common user annoyances.

Page experience is just one of many signals that are used to rank pages. Keep in mind that intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a page with a subpar page experience may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.

John Mueller, Reddit

Are the Core Web Vitals scored for each URL or the entire website?

The Core Web Vitals scores are assessed for each individual page, and it is very clear in our study results that some pages are above and others below these thresholds.

Is CWV a pass/fail score?

As you can see in the images above, Google Search Console shows three states for Core Web Vitals: poor, needs improvement, and good. This is a clear indication that pages either pass (good) or fail (poor or need improvement). PageSpeed Insights also indicates that pages either pass or do not pass so a safe bet is that Core Web Vitals is a pass or fail score.

How can I check the Core Web Vitals for my own pages?

PageSpeed Insights

If you’re curious to see the CWV scores for your own pages, the quickest way is to use PageSpeed Insights. Just enter your URL and you can see the results for both Desktop and Mobile.

Wattspeed

If you’re not looking for a one-time check, but rather to monitor your Core Web Vitals in time, take a look at Wattspeed. It’s a free tool that provides multiple page speed metrics and their evolution in time. You also get in-depth information about what the problem is and how you can improve your scores. You can then set up alerts that notify you every time your scores reach a certain threshold.

One interesting aspect of Wattspeed is that it lets you compare two pages. This allows you to see how a single page evolved in time and what problems had been fixed. But it also allows you to compare your page with a competitor’s page to see why the page experience scores are different.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console has a dedicated section for Desktop in the Page Experience report. It tells you how many of your URLs pass or fail the Core Web Vitals and the total number of impressions you get from these URLs.

It’s important to remember though that Google Search Console data comes from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), which does not show CWV scores for pages that have not met minimum traffic thresholds.

Conclusion

I’d like to thank the Wattspeed team for providing the raw data that made this study possible.

Now it’s time to hear what you think.

Were any of these findings surprising? Have you seen any significant position shifts after the Desktop rollout?

Tweet me and let me know your thoughts.

Clickthrough rate in 2021 vs. 2020

And since the data for the entire 2021 is now available, let’s have a glance at the Year over Year changes by comparing the average CTR values for each position in 2021 vs. the ones in 2020.

The CTR values were significantly impacted on both desktop and mobile devices at the top. Specifically, websites ranked first on desktop recorded a 1.40 pp percentage points (pp) decrease in CTR in 2021 vs. 2020, while on mobile, the drop was even higher (2.40 pp).

Google’s continuous scrolling impact on CTR

We can’t move forward without having a look at what happened to Google’s continuous scrolling on US mobile searches and its impact on CTR. The assumption was that by encouraging users to look beyond the first few results and scroll more, the websites ranked below the top ten results might get some additional clicks.

Well, in reality, this wasn’t quite the case: websites ranked below the 10th position on US mobile queries, witnessed an increase in clickthrough rate, just that this change was barely noticeable (between 0.01 pp and 0.07 pp). Only time could tell if searches will adopt this new behavior of searching past the first page using the continuous scrolling feature or they will stick to the first 10 results.

Now let’s look at how user behavior shaped the CTR values in the fourth quarter of the year compared to the previous one.

All searches

At a global level, the change affected only the websites ranked first on desktop queries, which registered an almost 1 percentage point increase in CTR (0.87 pp more precisely).

Branded vs. Unbranded queries

While the websites ranked for branded queries didn’t notice any significant changes in CTR, those ranked first on desktop for unbranded queries witnessed a boost close to a round percentage point (0.90 pp).

Keyword length

Significant changes were recorded on desktop searches only, with the websites ranked first for queries containing two words witnessing a 1.07 pp growth, while for the ones containing three words, the increase equaled 1.04 pp.

Search intent

After the previous quarter’s drop in clickthrough rate, the CTR for location queries (containing words such as near, from, nearby, directions, maps, etc.) got on the rising slope this time. Here, the websites ranked first experienced a 2.22 pp increase in CTR on desktop and no less than 3.54 pp on mobile searches. At the same time, websites ranked second recorded a 1.08 pp increase on desktop and a boost of 1.41 pp on mobile devices.

As for commercial queries (containing words such as price, pay, buy, etc.), the websites ranked first gained 1.31 pp in CTR on desktop searches.

Industries

Now let’s jump to the industries section, where, just like in the previous quarterly studies, we’ll correlate the changes in CTR to the ones in search demand to better estimate the potential traffic fluctuations.

This CTR report will contain two separate sections, based on the search demand’s evolution.

A. Industries where the search demand increased

After two consecutive quarters marked by drops in CTR, the Technology & Computing seems to be recovering, on mobile, at least. More precisely, websites ranked first on mobile devices registered a 1.24 pp growth, while the overall industry’s search demand increased by +22.35%.

The highest increase in impressions (+119.08%) recorded by our search demand tool was for the Family & Parenting market. One can assume this growth also meant a spike in traffic, especially for the websites ranked first on desktop, which also got a boost in clickthrough rate by 1.24 pp.

As for the Travel industry, the clickthrough rates for the top two websites registered a combined growth of 4.10 pp on desktop, while on mobile, only the websites ranked first were influenced by the changes, recording a 1.79 pp growth. At the same time, people’s desire to travel also increased in this final quarter of the year compared to Q3 2021 (+22.77%).

The Law, Government & Politics market was also affected at the top of the SERPs, where the websites ranked first registered 3.21 pp growth in CTR on desktop and 1.07 pp on mobile. Here, the search demand decreased by +13.76%.

With events such as Black Friday and the holiday season taking place in this fourth quarter, it was expected that the search demand would increase in the Shopping industry, and so it did: our search-demand tool recorded a +41.45% increase in impressions. As for the CTR values, websites ranked first on desktop registered about a percentage point increase.

It’s time to turn our attention to the fourth quarter’s highest decline in clickthrough rate: the Science market. Here, the websites ranked in the first three positions recorded a combined 16.12 pp loss in CTR on desktop (7.77 pp for those ranked first, 6.70 pp for those ranked second, and 1.64 pp for those ranked in the third position). On mobile, the loss affected the websites ranked second only, which witnessed a 2.34 pp decline in clickthrough rate. At the same time, the overall industry’s impressions increased by +48.62%.

While the search demand grew in the Home & Garden market (+3.73%), websites ranked first on desktop registered a 1.78 pp increase in CTR.

A similar trend occurred in the Food & Drink category, where the CTR values for the websites ranked first on desktop grew by 1.59 pp. Be that as it may, people’s interest in this industry grew in this final quarter of the year compared to Q3 (+26.67%).

The first two positions in the Arts & Entertainment industry experienced a combined 3.80 pp increase in CTR on desktop searches and a 3.83 pp boost on mobile. Surprisingly, the growth was higher for the websites ranked second than for the ones ranked first on both desktop (2.58 pp vs. 1.22 pp) and mobile (2.04 pp vs. 1.79 pp). These changes in CTR coupled with a growth of +53.52% in this industry’s overall search demand might translate into a boost in traffic for those websites affected by the changes.

News is the last one to make it into this quarter’s group of industries where clickthrough rate variations were recorded, and the search demand increased. The number of impressions increased by +37.37%, while the CTR for websites ranked first on mobile queries decreased by 1.65 pp.

Here’s a graphical representation of the changes in all ten industries mentioned above:

B. Industries that experienced a drop in search demand

With no major changes since Q2 2021, the websites ranked first in the Real Estate industry recorded a growth of 1.40 pp in CTR on mobile queries. On the other hand, the search demand for this industry registered losses when compared against the previous quarter (-9.07% to be more precise).

A slight change in CTR at the top was registered in the Careers industry, as well, just that this time, for the desktop queries. Therefore, websites ranked first lost, on average, 0.95 pp in this fourth quarter, while the overall industry’s number of impressions decreased by -4.62%.

And now let’s jump to the industry with the highest increase in clickthrough rate for a single position: the Automotive one. Here, the CTR for websites ranked first on queries made from desktop devices grew, on average, by 2.66 pp, while on mobile, the changes reached a remarkable 3.65 pp growth. However, the industry’s overall impressions dropped by -6.27% in Q4 compared to Q3.

The Personal Finance industry continued its CTR decline, which began two quarters ago, for the websites ranked first but only on mobile devices this time. Therefore, websites ranking first on mobile got an average decrease in clickthrough rate of 0.92 pp. At the same time, the impressions for this industry recorded a slight drop of -5.62%.

Good news for the websites in the Education sector, where we need to look back exactly one year ago to find the last time the industry recorded an increase in CTR. Here, the websites ranked first on desktop registered a 1.38 pp increase in clickthrough rate, while the industry’s overall impressions dropped by -52.02%.

Last but not least, let’s have a look at the Society category, which recorded a boost in CTR on both desktop and mobile devices. On desktop, the websites ranked first witnessed a round 1.00 pp growth, while on mobile, the increase was even bigger, equaling 1.34 pp. Here, the industry’s overall search demand decreased by -17.16%.

Here’s a visual recap of all the changes mentioned above:

That’s it for…the fourth quarter

It’s been quite an eventful quarter! We found out what was the impact on the CTR of Google’s continuous scrolling for the US market, we had a look at the YoY comparison and discovered the segments and industries impacted by changes.

Up next, let’s find out what the new year holds in store from a clickthrough rate perspective. But all this in our next quarterly analysis CTR report.

Until then, stay safe and healthy!

Since SERPs anatomy is under continuous development which leads to changes in searches’ behavior, it’s fundamental to assess the CTR evolution regularly to be able to pinpoint changes in traffic to these external factors.

That being said, let’s look at how user behavior shaped the CTR values in the third quarter of the year compared to the previous one.

All searches

At a global level, the changes affected only the desktop queries, where the websites ranked first registered a 2.22 pp decrease in CTR, while the decline equaled 1.11 for those ranked in the second position.

Branded vs unbranded

The declining trend in CTR for the first two positions on desktop queries was reflected in both the branded and unbranded queries.

More precisely, for those searches containing specific brand or business names, websites ranked first experienced a 2.46 pp decline in CTR, while those ranked second lost, on average, 1.70 pp.

As for the unbranded queries, the drop in CTR equaled 2.18 pp for the websites ranked first, while for those ranked second, the negative trend recorded a 1.03 pp drop.

Keyword length

Here, while there was no real change for the searches made from mobile devices, the CTR values for the websites ranked first on desktop dropped, regardless of the queries’ length.

More exactly, for 1-word searches, the loss equaled 2.39 pp, for 2-word queries, the registered loss accounted for 2.27 pp, for 3-word queries, the registered drop was 2.30 pp, and for searches containing four or more keywords, the decline was 1.89 pp.

Search intent

Websites ranked in the first two positions for commercial queries (those containing words such as price, pay, buy, etc.) recorded a combined 2.70 pp loss in CTR on desktop (1.85 pp for those ranked first and 0.85 for those ranked second). On mobile, the loss affected the websites ranked first only, which witnessed almost an entire percentage point decline in clickthrough rate.

Significant changes were also recorded for the websites ranked in the first two positions for location queries on both desktop and mobile. Therefore, for queries containing words such as near, nearby, from, directions, route, maps, etc., websites ranked first on desktop experienced a 1.24 pp drop in CTR, while those in the second spot recorded a 1.76 pp decrease.

The combined decline was even steeper on mobile, with the websites ranked first witnessing a 3 pp drop in CTR, while those ranked in the second position registering a 1.31 pp decrease.

Industries

Let’s move on to the industries section, where, just like in the previous quarterly studies, we’ll correlate the changes in CTR to the ones in search demand. This way, we’re attempting to point out the causes for the potential traffic ups and downs in each industry.

An increase in clickthrough rate for a website’s positions correlated with a growth in search demand for a given industry will most likely result in a spike in traffic. The same goes when both the CTR values and search demand decrease, resulting in a drop in traffic.

This part will be divided into two separate sections, based on the search demand’s evolution.

A. Industries that experienced an increase in search demand

The Technology & Computing industry continued its CTR decline, which began in the previous quarter, for the websites ranked first but only on desktop devices. This time, websites ranking first on desktop got a decrease in clickthrough rate of 1.74 pp. At the same time, the search demand stopped from falling and seemed to recover, since it recorded a slight increment of +5.37%.

Although its search demand registered a spectacular +68.01% growth, the CTR values remained quite steady in the Careers industry. The only significant change registered here affected the websites ranked first on desktop, who lost, on average 1.10 pp in CTR from Q2 to Q3.

In what might be considered as one of the most significant steep declines in clickthrough rates for a single position, the websites ranked first on desktop in the Family & Parenting category recorded a 4.65 pp loss, while those ranked second registered a remarkably lower decline rate (1.26 pp). The drop in CTR was consistent on mobile, as well, where websites ranked first lost, on average, 3.61 pp, while those in the second position registered a 1.45 pp loss.

On a more positive note, the search demand increased by +21.40% for this industry.

With some of the COVID-19 travel restrictions lifted in most countries around the World, and during people’s preferred vacation season, the Travel market registered this quarter’s highest growth in search-demand: no less than +145.46%. As for the clickthrough rate values in this industry, only the desktop queries were affected, with the websites ranked first losing 1.81 pp, while those in the second position registering a 1.45 pp loss.

People’s interest in the Automotive industry grew sharply, by +68.21%, while the CTR values went in the opposite direction, at least for the top two positions on desktop. Websites ranked first registered a 1.78 pp drop, while those ranked second witnessed a decrease in clickthrough rate of 1.07 pp.

Despite the slight growth in search demand (+11.39%), the websites ranked first in the Personal Finance industry recorded a 2.30 pp drop in CTR on desktop devices and a 1.27 pp loss for the queries made from mobile devices.

Now let’s have a look at the Hobbies & Interests industry, where drops have been recorded for the websites ranked first on both desktop and mobile searches. More exactly, on desktop, the loss was 2.17 pp, while on mobile, it equaled 1.58 pp. On the other hand, the search demand grew remarkably for this industry, by +37.51%.

In the Shopping industry, websites ranked first recorded a 1.92 pp drop in CTR on desktop. At the same time, the total number of impressions increased substantially, by +39.41%.

With no major changes since Q4 2020, the websites ranked first in the Health & Fitness industry recorded drops in CTR on both desktop (1.53 pp) and mobile queries (1.92 pp). Nevertheless, the search demand for this industry recorded growth when compared against the previous quarter (+19.50% to be more precise).

Desktop and mobile CTR values went in opposite directions this time around in the Arts & Entertainment market, for websites ranked first and second, as follows:

• on desktop, for the websites ranked first, the drop in CTR was 1.72 pp, while for those ranked second, the decrease equaled 1.05 pp
• on mobile, websites ranked first recorded growth in clickthrough rate of 1.40 pp, while for those in the second position, the increase was even higher, of 1.83 pp

Concurrently, the number of impressions for this industry grew steeply, by +64.84%.

It’s been a year already since the Home & Garden market last recorded fluctuations in clickthrough rate and it didn’t fail to impress. Unfortunately, there were drops recorded for the websites ranked first, on both desktop (4.07 pp) and mobile devices (1.56 pp). However, the industry’s search demand was on the rise, by +16.76%.

A similar situation occurred for the Business category, where websites ranked first registered a 3.58 pp drop on desktop and a smoother decline on mobile, by 1.58 pp. At the same time, the overall industry’s impressions increased by +48.56%.

Pets market had an asymmetrical evolution in CTR in regards to the devices and positions affected in the third quarter of the year. Surprisingly, while the websites ranked first on desktop lost, on average, 2.48 pp in CTR, those in the second position but on mobile this time, experienced a 1.30 pp boost in clickthrough rate. Simultaneously, the industry’s overall search demand recorded a consistent increase of +23.81%.

Society is the last one to make it into this quarter’s group of industries where clickthrough rate variations were recorded, and the search demand increased. The number of impressions increased at a small scale (+1.03%), while the CTR for websites ranked first decreased on both desktop (1.57 pp) and mobile devices (2.12 pp).

Here’s a visual round-up of the CTR evolution for the industries mentioned above:

B. Industries where the search demand dropped

The first three positions in the Sports industry experienced a combined 6.27 pp decrease in CTR on desktop (3.47 pp for those ranked in the first position, 1.69 pp for those ranked second, and 1.11 pp for the ones in the third spot). Coupled with a decrease of -5.54% in search demand, it’s highly probable that the websites ranked in those three positions noticed some loss in organic traffic.

It’s time to turn our attention to the highest drop for a single position in CTR: the Law, Government & Politics market. Websites ranked in the first position experienced a 9.20 pp decline in CTR on desktop devices. On the other hand, on mobile, for the very same position, the decline recorded was 2.77 pp.  At the same time, the impressions for this industry recorded a decline of -9.01%.

The highest decrease in impressions (-22.19%) recorded by our search demand tool was for the News market. Here, the CTR values for the websites ranked on the first two positions experienced a combined 4.70 pp decline in CTR on desktop devices and a round 2 pp drop on mobile.

After a quiet quarter (the latest changes date back to Q1), the Food & Drink industry experienced a slight change in CTR, and only for the websites ranked first on desktop, which lost about 1.10 pp of their estimated clicks. At the same time, the industry’s search demand dropped by -11.24%.

With a decrease in search demand of -17.02%, the Style & Fashion industry recorded drops in CTR on desktop queries only: websites ranked first lost 1.68 pp and for those in the second position, the loss equaled 1.22 pp.

In what might seem surprising from the low number of CTR percentage points gained, this quarter’s winner comes from the Science industry. Here, both the websites ranked first and second on desktop went head-to-head with 2.43 pp gained and 2.47 pp, respectively. On the other hand, on mobile, the changes affected the websites ranked first only, who lost 2.14 pp. The industry’s overall impressions decreased a bit, by -3.79%.

Last but not least, let’s have a look at the Education market, which recorded a drop in CTR on both desktop and mobile devices. On desktop, the websites ranked first witnessed a 2.88 pp drop, while on mobile, the loss almost halved, equaling 1.42 pp. Here, the industry’s overall search demand slightly decreased by -1.46%.

Here’s a graphical representation of the changes in all seven industries mentioned above:

That’s it for…the third quarter

As you might have noticed, the majority of CTR ups and downs in this quarter occurred on desktop, so our next changes report analysis becomes even more interesting since it could shed some light on Google’s continuous scrolling on mobile.

The assumption is that by encouraging searchers to look beyond the first few results and scroll more, the websites ranked below the first page might get some additional clicks.

This remains to be found out soon, so make sure to subscribe to be the first to find out the results of our coming study.

Until then, stay safe and healthy!

A growth in clickthrough rate combined with an increase in impressions for a given industry could translate into a spike in traffic for those websites affected by these changes. The same goes for simultaneous drops in both CTR values and search demand, which leads to a decrease in traffic. 

These scenarios can provide a logical explanation for changes in the number of visitors when the rankings remain perfectly steady.

If you find yourself in any of these cases, this analysis is just for you, so let’s dive into the clickthrough rate changes analysis of the second quarter of the year.

All searches

At a global level, websites ranked first registered a 1.03 pp decrease in CTR on desktop, while the decline equaled 1.32 pp on mobile devices.

Branded vs. unbranded

The websites ranked first for the searches mentioning a specific brand or business name were affected on both desktop and mobile queries. On desktop, the drop in CTR equaled 1.70 pp, while on mobile, the negative trend recorded a 1.25 pp drop.

On the other hand, but for unbranded queries this time, the CTR changes affected the mobile queries only. Here, websites ranked first witnessed a drop in CTR by 1.30 pp.

Keyword length

Regardless of the number of words a keyword has, our CTR tool recorded drops on almost all fronts for websites ranked first as follows:

• On desktop, for 1-word queries, the change wasn’t quite visible, while for 2-word queries, the loss equaled 0.99 pp, for 3-word searches, the drop was 1.18 pp, and for searches containing four or more keywords, the decline recorded 1.28 pp.
• On mobile, the changes occurred for all keyword length types. More precisely, for 1-word searches, the loss equaled 1.23 pp, for 2-word queries, the registered loss accounted for 1.52 pp, for 3-word queries, the registered drop was 1.32 pp, and for searches containing four or more keywords, the decline was 1.19 pp.

Here’s a quick graphical round-up of how the CTR value changes look like for websites ranked first based on the number of words each query has:

Search type

In the absence of external factors such as COVID-19 travel restrictions in almost all areas across the globe, the CTR values for location queries were still consistently affected by changes. Therefore, websites ranked in the first two positions for queries containing words such as “near, from, nearby, directions, maps, etc.” recorded a 4.23 pp loss in CTR on desktop and a 2.52 pp decline for queries made from mobile devices.

Drops in clickthrough rate values were recorded for commercial queries (those containing words such as price, pay, buy, etc.) as well, with websites ranked first, losing 1.39 pp on desktop and 1.46 pp on mobile.

Industries

Now let’s move on to the industries section, where, just like in our previous quarterly CTR studies, we’ll correlate the changes in CTR to the ones in search demand. Presuming the rankings remain steady, this section is aimed at better estimating the potential traffic fluctuations.

This part will be divided into two separate sections, based on the search demand’s evolution.

A. Industries where the search demand increased

After the previous quarter’s growth in CTR on both desktop and mobile searches, the Family & Parenting industry took a small step back. More precisely, websites ranked in the first position on mobile queries lost, on average, 1.22 pp in clickthrough rate, while the search demand for this industry slightly increased, by +0.94%.

As for the Sports industry, surprisingly, websites ranked first weren’t quite influenced by the changes. However, those ranked in the second position registered a 1.54 pp increase in CTR in desktop SERPs, while on mobile, the growth equaled 1.05 pp. Combined with a +22.78% increase in search demand, it’s highly probable that these websites recorded an increased amount of organic traffic.

With no real changes since Q4 2020, the News industry experienced some movement at the top, with the first two rank websites gaining a combined 2.02 pp in CTR on desktop and 1.09 pp on mobile queries. At the same time, the total number of impressions increased slightly, by 4.51%.

Style & Fashion is the last one to make it into this quarter’s group of industries where clickthrough rate variations were recorded, and the search demand increased. The number of impressions increased at a small scale (+1.34%), while the CTR for websites ranked first on mobile queries decreased by 1.24 pp.

Here’s a graphical representation of the changes in all four industries mentioned above:

B. Industries that experienced a drop in search demand

With drops in both CTR and search demand, there is a high probability that the websites ranked first in the Technology & Computing industry noticed a decline in organic traffic. While the industry’s global search demand dropped no less than -22.71%, websites ranked first experienced a 1.14 pp decrease in CTR on desktop and a 1.05 pp loss on mobile queries.

The websites ranked first on mobile results in the Real Estate industry continued their drop in CTR, witnessing a 2.97 loss. More than that, this quarter, the market saw a decline in CTR for websites ranked first on desktop, as well, who lost, on average, 2.54 pp. At the same time, the total number of impressions decreased considerably, with -21.17%.

Although its search demand registered a -6.77% loss, the Arts & Entertainment industry made it again into the quarterly CTR report thanks to its growth in clickthrough rate values. Here, the CTR for websites ranked first on desktop devices increased by 1.10 pp, while no significant changes were recorded on mobile.

After starting the year in force, with growth on all fronts, the Pets market went the other way around during this second quarter. With an overall industry drop of -12.05% in search demand, the websites ranked first and second on desktop registered a 1.87 pp and, respectively, a 1.24 pp drop in CTR.

It’s time to turn our attention to the highest growth in Q2: the Science market. While the websites ranked in the first position weren’t quite affected by the changes, those ranked second experienced a 4.64 pp boost in CTR on desktop devices and an entire percentage point on mobile. In contrast, this industry’s search demand decreased by -18.97%.

The first two positions in the Careers industry experienced a combined 3.20 pp decrease in CTR on desktop searches. Coupled with a drop of -16.98% in search demand, it’s highly probable that the websites ranked in those two positions noticed a decrease in organic traffic.

With a decrease in search demand of -2.70%, the Automotive industry recorded a drop in CTR for the websites ranked first and second: a combined 4.26 pp on desktop searches and 4.58 pp on mobile.

The highest decrease in impressions (-43.07%) recorded by our search demand tool was for the Law, Government, & Politics market. Nevertheless, the CTR values went in the opposite direction, and interestingly, the websites ranked first weren’t influenced by the changes. However, those ranked second in SERPs registered a 2.34 pp boost in CTR on desktop, while the increase on mobile equaled 1.80 pp.

Now let’s have a look at the Personal Finance industry, where drops have been recorded for the websites ranked first on both desktop and mobile searches. More exactly, on desktop, the loss was 1.45 pp, while on mobile, it equaled 1.53 pp. The search demand also dropped for this industry by -15.93%.

With no major changes since Q4 2020, the websites ranked first in the Shopping industry recorded drops in CTR on both desktop (2.18 pp) and mobile queries (2.11 pp). The search demand for this industry also recorded losses when compared against the previous quarter (-8.99% to be more precise).

One last market where the search demand dropped (by -27.48%) is Hobbies & Interests. At the same time, the CTR values went in the same direction, at least for the websites ranked first, which registered a 1.18 pp drop on desktop and a 1.33 pp decrease on mobile queries.

Here’s a visual recap of all the changes mentioned above:

That’s it for…the second quarter

It’s time to conclude another eventful quarter’s analysis, with significant CTR changes for most industries.

So how about you? Have you noticed any changes in traffic which might be correlated with the clickthrough rates and search demand evolution in Q2?

If so, make sure to keep an eye on the average CTR values regularly since this metric evolves rapidly, affecting your website’s traffic. 

See you with the analysis of the third quarter of the year compiled against this one. Stay safe and healthy!

This makes our current data interpretation even more interesting in our quest to answer questions such as: is the change in CTR as dramatic as one year ago? Were those changes only one-time, or was it the beginning of new behavior? Will we return to the post-pandemic search behavior, or will a “new normal” step-in?

We’ll shed some light on these questions in what comes next by presenting you the most significant changes that occurred when comparing the CTR values retrieved in Q1 2021 against Q4 2020.

Branded vs. unbranded: 

For those searches containing specific brand or business names, websites ranked first experienced 0.79 pp growth in CTR on searches made from desktop devices.

On the other hand, websites ranked first on mobile, but for unbranded queries this time, witnessed a drop in CTR by 0.71 pp.

Keyword length:

Significant changes were recorded on one-word keyword searches only, with the websites ranked first, witnessing a 0.68 pp drop on desktop, while on mobile, the loss equaled 0.95 pp.

Industries:

Let’s move on to the industries section, where, just like in the previous quarterly studies, we’ll correlate the changes in CTR to the ones in search demand. This way, we’re attempting to point out the causes for the potential traffic ups and downs in each industry.

This part will be divided into two separate sections, based on the search demand’s evolution.

A. Industries that experienced an increase in search demand

Following the previous quarter’s drop in search demand, the Real Estate industry managed to get back on track, with an encouraging +18.49% increase in impressions. However, websites ranked first on mobile devices experienced a 2.28 pp drop in clickthrough rate.

Despite closing the previous year with a drop in search demand, the Automotive industry recovered a bit from this perspective. With an overall +6.58% increase in impressions, the websites ranked first lost 1.06 pp in CTR on searches made from mobile devices.

At  the burst of the pandemic in the same quarter one year ago, the top ranking websites in the Personal Finance industry witnessed some pretty high growth in CTR. This fear of financial uncertainty was also present during this quarter, where surprisingly, websites ranked first weren’t influenced by the changes, while those ranked in the second position in desktop SERPs registered a 1.02 pp increase in CTR. Combined with a +11.28% increase in search-demand, it’s highly probable that these websites recorded an increased amount of organic traffic.

With increase in search demand of +1.99%, the Food & Drink industry recorded a drop in CTR for the websites ranked first and second: a combined 4.44 pp on desktop searches and 3.75 pp on mobile.

With some of the COVID-19 travel restrictions lifted, the Travel market registered an impressive growth in search-demand: no less than +34.76%. As for the clickthrough rate values in this industry, only the websites ranked first were affected: on desktop, they recorded a 0.92 pp loss, while on mobile the decrease was even higher, equaling 1.32 pp.

The Pets industry starts the year in force, with growth on all fronts. With a global +7.18% increase in search-demand, websites ranked first recorded a 2.22 pp boost on desktop and 1.18 pp on searches made from mobile devices.

Here’s a graphical representation of the changes in all six industries mentioned above:

B. Industries where the search demand dropped

Despite the drop in search demand (-19.43%), the websites ranked in the first position on desktop searches in the Technology & Computing industry recorded a 1.71 pp increase in CTR.

The previous quarter’s drop in CTR seems to have only been an isolated event since the websites in the Careers industry managed to register some encouraging results. With no real change for mobile queries, the first two websites ranked in this industry witnessed a combined 4.21 pp growth in clickthrough rates on desktop. However, the total number of impressions slightly decreased, by -8.36%.

Although its search demand registered a -5.17% loss, the Family & Parenting industry made it again into the quarterly CTR report thanks to its growth in clickthrough rate values. Here, the CTR for websites ranked first on desktop devices increased by 2.70 pp, while for the very same position on mobile, the growth equaled 1.57 pp.

After two consecutive quarters with impressive growth in search demand, most probably influenced by the elections (especially in the US), it’s time for the Law, Government, & Politics market to lose some interest. Here, our search-demand tool recorded the highest decrease of the quarter (by -84.79%), while the CTR for the websites ranked first on queries made from desktop devices grew, on average, by 1.58 pp.

Disappointingly, the interest in the Education category translated into impressions recorded a significant decline: more precisely a -29.45% loss. Simultaneously, the websites ranked in the first position for desktop searches registered a 1.63 pp decrease in CTR, while on mobile, the drop equaled 0.91 pp. 

The search demand in the Arts & Entertainment industry decreased on a small scale (-6.72%), and the CTR values fluctuated only on mobile devices. Surprisingly, websites ranked first weren’t influenced by the changes, while those ranked in the second position in SERPs registered a 1.14 pp drop in CTR.

Following the previous quarter’s negative record established for its average CTR, unfortunately, the Science industry retains its unofficial title once more. Here, the clickthrough rates for the top two websites registered a combined drop of 10.15 pp on desktop and 5.12 pp on mobile devices. At the same time, people’s interest in science also dropped in this first quarter of the year compared to Q4 2020 (-3.21%).

Last but not least, let’s have a look at the Hobbies & Interests market, which recorded a drop in CTR on mobile devices only. For these queries, the websites ranked first witnessed a 1.34 pp drop, while this industry’s overall search demand decreased by -12.48%.

Here’s a visual round-up of the CTR evolution for the industries mentioned above:

That’s it for…the first quarter

It’s time to conclude the first quarter’s clickthrough rate analysis and, with that, prepare for the second chapter of the year. 

As you might have noticed, most of the changes included in this report occurred at an industry level. So that’s why you’ll need to reassess this metric regularly and benchmark your website’s CTR values against the industry ones. 

And, as usual, make sure to leave your thoughts in the comments section down below. I’ll see you with the analysis of Q2 2021 compiled against this one. Stay safe and healthy!

Featured Snippet listings get less than half the clicks a no.1 listing would typically get in organic-only SERPs.

Source: Advanced Web Ranking CTR Study research data

Research data help you shed some light on the influence search features have on people’s click behavior and what results to expect from organic search, given the Google results page’s current anatomy.

Studies, however, can only paint half the picture. 

To figure out if search features are (or could be) beneficial for your organic visibility, you also need to compare with the CTR you are getting in SERPs with features, not just from aggregated data. 

In this brief article, I’ll show you how you can measure your own CTR for SERP features with Advanced Web Ranking and how to get a detailed look at the overall impact search features have on your performance in SERPs. 

We’ll talk about how to:

• Measure your CTR curve for SERPs with features
• Determine what features drive the most clicks
• Research GSC keywords that trigger search features

Let’s get started.

Measure your organic CTR in SERPs with search features

The only reliable source we have for measuring how many people click our listings in search is Google’s Search Console, so that’s where we’ll start from.

The only culprit GSC data has is that it won’t tell you which of the keywords trigger search features, nor which features are triggered so you can estimate as to how SERPs features correlate with your CTRs and Impression count.

But that’s a problem we can quickly solve with a rank tracker, in this case, Advanced Web Ranking, that has SERP features tracking capabilities.

We’ll pair GSC and ranking together data and see how CTRs change when different features are included in the SERP.

In Advanced Web Ranking, you’ll find all this information in the CTR Trends menu, the SERP Features report, that takes all your GSC monthly data and breaks it down for you by search features.

Let’s say you want to measure how Featured snippets have interfered with your listings in organic search:

• Did you get a better CTR when your website was listed in a featured snippet? 
• Or did it steal any clicks from you when you weren’t listed as one?

The first thing you’ll do is go back to the research data and look at how the CTR curve typically looks for SERPs with Featured Snippets compared with organic-only SERPs.

This shows that in general, when Featured Snippets are present, the CTR for the first search results listing, which is the Snippet itself, drops considerably, while positions 2 to 5 get a slight increase in CTR as compared to what they get in organic-only listings.

With this in mind, you can now look at your own CTR curve and see how it compares with the global values in the CTR Trend report.

In this example, my CTR curve for SERPs with Featured Snippets, the blue line, is slightly above the average, gray one, for the top 1 to 4 rankings.

So it seems that when I’m listed as a Featured Snippet, at the top of the SERP, I get a slightly better CTR than what Featured Snippets usually get, according to the research data. Nonetheless, that’s nowhere near the CTR I would be getting for a top position in SERPs with no Featured Snippets.

On the other hand, when I’m listed right below the Featured Snippet, on positions 2 to 4, although I get more or less the same CTR as the average curve line, that’s already a better CTR than those recorded for organic-only SERPs. 

For my particular case, a more in-depth analysis would be required to determine whether getting listed as a Featured Snippet is truly beneficial for my website and is worth pursuing. 

Which search features drive the most clicks

To achieve visibility from search features, you’ll want to identify the most frequently triggered features by the queries in your niche that also get reasonable amounts of clicks simultaneously.  

The CTR Trends report introduces a SERP Feature Popularity score that helps you determine which features are triggered most often by the keywords you appear in search results for.

This score has two values: one is per project, based on the keywords retrieved from your GSC account, and one is global, based on the entire data set we have available for processing in our research tools. 

Having both values available lets you understand how you stand as opposed to other industries.

For instance, I may be lured by the idea of getting organic exposure from the Images search feature, knowing that one-quarter of queries are triggering first-page images results. 

Still, by looking at my project’s popularity score, I quickly realize that I have no chance of doing that with my current set of keywords. 

To find the most popular features for my keyword set, I simply run through the list and look at their Project Popularity score. 

I’m getting that People Also Ask (PAA) is the most frequently triggered feature by my keywords, with a Popularity of 63.82%.

This means that 63.82% of the keywords that I have Impressions for are triggering PAA blocks, way above the Global average frequency of 39.31%.

The chart also shows that I’m missing quite a bit of CTR opportunity with my top-ranked keywords, getting almost half the CTR first positions usually in SERPs with PAA blocks.

Search Console keywords that trigger featured snippets

Suppose you’re looking to improve organic visibility with search features. In that case, you also need to find new keyword ideas that are guaranteed to have the targeted feature in SERP, and Search Console is always a great starting point for researching keywords. 

Further down in the CTR Trends report, you’ll find listed, for each selected SERP Feature, the keywords from your Search Console account that trigger the respective feature in search results, along with the specific GSC metrics: Clicks, Impressions, Average Position, and CTR.

Being pulled from GSC, these keywords are also guaranteed to be deemed as relevant by Google for your website, nevertheless not every one of these keywords is worth investing time and effort into.

Thus you would probably want to give this list a closer look and make a proper selection. 

There are a few filters available you can use to narrow the list of keywords to those you’re listed most often for and from which you already get lots of clicks.

At this point, you may also find useful the SERP Feature Average Position calculated for your keyword set, which tells you, on average, the position where each feature was found ranking. 

By comparing this to your website’s average ranking for each keyword, you’re able to correctly evaluate your chances of winning the feature and the amount of work needed to achieve that.

Take it for a spin

The organic CTR curve will continue to shape itself as the SERPs evolve, and the users’ click behavior changes. It’s a metric that you’ll need to reassess regularly. 

At the same time, search features continue to grab the users’ attention in SERPs so they become great opportunities for achieving extra organic visibility.

This report brings the two together and gives you the means to take a more in-depth and actionable look at your organic CTR curve.

It would be great to know what you think of it.

What a time to be alive!

We are in the throes of a global pandemic and everything is effectively up in the air. Governments are scrambling to make sense of it while attempting to stave off a contraction of the global economy. People are losing their jobs and struggling across various points of the isolation spectrum. Meanwhile, consumer behavior is mutating and there’s no telling if we will ever return to what we think of as “normal.”

Simultaneously, marketers are trying to convince companies to keep spending marketing dollars and power through. Or, they are trying to figure out how to somehow hold on until a recovery, but there is no telling where that recovery is on the horizon.

As a consumer, marketer and small business owner, I’ve sat back synthesizing a lot of information and wanting to make sense of where I believe we are heading. That’s not to say that I’m above sharing a study from a management consultancy to convince you should continue to invest in marketing, but I prefer to paint the bigger picture.

What I can say, definitively, is that Search is continuing to show its strength as one of the most powerful market research panels in the world. Google’s Search box has the unmatched ability to encourage people of all walks of life to codify the latest iteration of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in Orwellian DoubleSpeak.

I reached out to the Advanced Web Ranking team to see what types of aggregated data we could review across their customer base so we could get a sense of how Search demand is shifting. Philip and his team were kind enough to spin it up for me.

Voila! We quickly get the ability to passively take the temperature of the community and verify where their interests and needs are shifting during this crisis. As you can see in the above data anonymously derived from Google Search Console impressions in Advanced Web Ranking’s dataset, key areas such as Construction, Hotels, Insurance, Entertaining, Real Estate, Shopping, and Travel are all seeing declines. This comes as no surprise, however, because these are all things that cannot effectively coexist with Social Distancing mandates. For example, how much do you need insurance if you can’t leave the house?

On the positive side, the dataset is showing dramatic increases in demand for Financial Aid, Computer Certification, and Television & Video. Many people are finding themselves jobless and looking for something they can do online and remotely between binging on the latest season of Ozark.

As marketers, we are all engaged in an on-going and interactive study of consumer psychology. I want to explore the new context we’ve found ourselves in and determine how we can use that context to support both consumers and producers.

Environmental Factors

Naturally, there are a series of environmental factors at play here. It’s not just that people are getting sick and reacting to a virus; global interdependence is also meaningfully impacted by people’s inability to work during the pandemic. With the coronavirus starting in China, and all of the planet’s supply chain routing through the Celestial Empire, we are also witnessing a supply chain reaction.

While the effects are, of course, international, my personal context is the United States — New York City to be exact. Like much of the world, we are heavily dependent on Chinese imports. From Wine & Liquor on the low end to Computers and communication equipment on the high, according to the US Census Bureau, the US of A imported over $446 billion in goods from China in 2019. Many of these goods are not final products, rather the materials and machinery required to create goods that are made available around the world.

With COVID-19 quickly reaching a literal fever pitch, China went on lockdown at the end of January 2020. So, before COVID-19 became China’s major export, the world was already poised to experience delays in the availability of goods and services of all kinds.

This is a global issue because China is also the world’s largest exporter, so the impacts on goods and services would have a global impact even if the outbreak was limited to China. With the majority of the world in quarantine, it is difficult to fulfill many physical goods, especially at the speed that we’d grown accustomed to.

According to a Digital Commerce 360 study, most retailers are expecting shortages and delays. Consumer behavior is changing in reaction to scarcity, both in stores and of stores.

As an NYC resident, I wanted to purchase a printer to work on this article (don’t ask) and Amazon said it would take five days to arrive. I’m used to receiving things the next day. My other options were stores that I couldn’t be sure were open. As a consumer, I am confused and unsure if I can trust retailers at this time.

Shifts in Supply and Demand

Supply and Demand is, of course, the core market driver outside of consumer confidence. However, it’s generally a more subtle force that rears its head over time. In the case of COVID-19, we’re instead seeing drastic and dramatic swings in real-time.

Consider the airline industry. According to the IATA, passenger demand was projected to grow by 4.1% in 2020.

Instead, with multi-national companies curtailing business travel for their employees since early March, and the shelter in place mandates coming on line late March, demand made a crash landing. First flight prices were sent into a tailspin, shortly thereafter supply took a nosedive in accommodation as airlines could no longer justify keeping so many empty planes in the air. IATA’s monthly statistics data illustrates just how far that demand has fallen.

Unfortunately, the airlines continued to be grounded by bad news and have struggled to identify a new supply and demand equilibrium. As a result, many large airlines have had to furlough or otherwise layoff thousands of employees. Typically, this type of dramatic change in demand takes multiple quarters to identify. Companies have changed management solutions to react slowly in measured ways to recover. In the face of a pandemic, it’s proven to be impossible.

In other instances, N95 Masks, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper demand has skyrocketed. As China’s supply chains have slowly come back online, D2C companies have sprouted up with Shopify stores in their wake. You can find them in ads on your Facebook timeline with slightly different creative and random company names as seen below.

Thes companies tend to be small, agile and utterly expendable. They find a supplier that can dropship and they throw up a site, some compelling ad creative and capitalize on Facebook’s low CPAs. This is an example of high demand meeting low supply.

What we’re experiencing is unprecedented in the Information Age. There are a lot of comparisons to the 2008 financial crisis, but this isn’t that. Nearly all businesses are closed. Supply chains are disrupted. People are effectively on a suggested house arrest and there is no definitive end suggested prior to a vaccine that may appear in 2021.

Based on Morgan Stanley’s model, it’s unrealistic to expect the economy will achieve a new equilibrium until 1-3 years from now.

Producer/Company Behavior

If you do Marketing of any kind right now, you are feeling the direct effects of companies pulling budgets. In times of uncertainty, any type of company needs to enforce financial discipline and be more conservative in its spending. CFOs are dialing into Zoom calls everyday to do their fiduciary duty of trimming the fat and tightening the purse strings.

How is that playing out so far?

Well, according to a survey run by IAB, 98% of agency respondents have indicated that ad spending has been cut for Q2 2020 as a result of COVID-19. Q3 and Q4 are still on the chopping block but have been less impacted thus far. This suggests that many companies are in a “wait and see” pattern.

Companies are seeing less value in branding channels like Display and Paid Social. However, interestingly enough, agencies are indicating that Paid Search campaigns are net zero. This makes sense that brands may want to pull back spend here and focus on more direct acquisition opportunities.

What’s most interesting is that the LinearTV campaigns are taking a hit as well which suggests that COVID-19 may be inducing a shift from traditional media to digital and Search is benefiting most because brands have a direct ability to be reactive to intent.

That said, everpresent yet anonymous analysts are projecting that Search spending (both Paid and Organic) will be down between 8.7 and 14.8% after several years of growth.

Let’s dig in a bit further to determine why Search has unique opportunities and spending less on it may be a mistake.

Economic Downturns Favor the Bold

I warned you that I might go full Marty Kaan at some point.

Markets are inherently irrational, and an economic downturn is always an opportunity. A market collapse due to a global shut down is rational, but these are the moments when fortunes are made and it is the companies that continue to strategically invest that make out stronger on the other side. Those companies that become overly conservative during market uncertainty are the ones that lose brand awareness, market share and ultimately fall behind competitors that fill in the share of voice that other companies vacated.

A Bain & Co. study indicated that those that remained in a measured growth mode through the 2008 recession, saw a 14% profit advantage after the economy recovered over those that turned more conservative.

That study, found in Bain’s Beyond the Downturn: Recession Strategies to Take the Lead article presented it in an especially compelling way:

“Companies that ranked among the eventual winners, by contrast, moved deliberately to capture opportunities before the recession. While they focused intensively on cost transformation, they also looked beyond cost. Think of a recession as a sharp curve on an auto racetrack—the best place to pass competitors, but requiring more skill than straightaways. The best drivers apply the brakes just ahead of the curve (they take out excess costs), turn hard toward the apex of the curve (identify the short list of projects that will form the next business model), and accelerate hard out of the curve (spend and hire before markets have rebounded).”

Brands are pulling over on the autobahn to be passed at high speed by those that stay pushing in web traffic. In other words, you should put Search on that shortlist.

From a digital marketing perspective, the opportunity is clear. CPMs for Facebook and Instagram are down and while I cannot find aggregated data on CPCs for Google Ads, discussions with Paid Media specialists indicate the same is true of the channel previously known as Adwords.

It makes sense, after all, these advertising platforms function as auctions. If there is less competition in the auction, winning is cheaper. If winning is cheaper, you have more opportunity to be seen and more opportunities to convert users into buyers.

Every marketing dollar will go further than it did last month. If you’re considering cutting your budgets, perhaps Search isn’t the right place.

Consumer Behavior

The more important part of this discussion is – what are people doing?

Personally, I wince whenever I hear the term “new normal.” In most cases, it’s presented as though it’s a temporary state. Hidden within those three syllables is the expectation that, two months from now, we will tune into the news and everyone will walk out of their home simultaneously, celebrate, and resume everything they were doing prior to the quarantine.

In reality, this pandemic is unprecedented within the lifetimes of most people that are experiencing it. As a result, consumers are forming new habits as you read this.

Suffice to say, if market segmentation is a core component of your strategy (it should be) what you believe to be true of those segments is no longer accurate.

Consumers Are Distracted

Perhaps the most important aspect beyond consumers being scared to spend money is that they aren’t paying attention.

In the US, people are glued to the news media and preoccupied with fear and uncertainty. They are not paying attention to the things that they normally would. At our core, they are living with the cognitive overhead of being concerned with their health and their ability to maintain their lifestyles more so than in the entire history of the public Internet.

This is reflected in Search in the United States; people are waking up every day and looking up what’s happening with the coronavirus. The spikes in interest in this Google Trends chart happen between 7 and 9 am on a daily basis.

Conversely, Worldwide, people are checking on it before they go to bed

The ultimate question you have to ask as a brand is – how can we help people through this pandemic or how can we help them escape?

Consumer Behavior is Different…and It May Be Permanent

Right now people are two things the regular pace of the world usually does not allow them to be en masse: bored and afraid.COVID-19 is an existential crisis the only thing to do is sit and wait.

With fear of leaving the home, there has been a shift in online shopping for essentials like groceries and cleaning products as well as an increase in the need for reading materials and entertainment.

Before the US government began treating COVID-19 like the pandemic that it truly is, entertainment companies delayed the debut of films like the latest James Bond. Now, with Trolls: World Tour we have the first example of a media company leaning into streaming first in lieu of a theatrical release. Consumers reacted. Reader — your author reacted. Anything that keeps my three-year-old daughter happy while she can’t go outside works for me.

With the record-breaking release, the US was just effectively trainer to pay $20 for a film you can only watch for 48 hours. Hollywood knows this works and you can rest assured that they will attempt to build a new consumer habit out of it to combat the losses they are experiencing.

And you know what? Going to the grocery store is a chore. How many will go back to it once the world re-opens?

All in all, spending is down, so the net effect is not positive. Consumers are shifting their dollars to e-commerce. So, it’s counterintuitive that brands would want to pull their spending from there because that’s where a large part of the opportunity to pull a brand through the downturn lies.

The composite dynamic at play is that demand is up in specific areas, supply is down, but the competitive landscape is receding and the channels that brands are choosing to be active in are shrinking. This is perhaps the best time to double down on Search because it is the most efficient channel and you get a short feedback loop that includes results against consumer intent.

Changes in Search Demand

I took the long way to get here, but as with any data, context is important. Let’s examine Travel, Fashion, Food and Drink and Personal Finance to see what has changed and how marketers can leverage Search to both help people and drive growth during the pandemic.

Travel

Travel acts as the bigger picture industry, but the data that Advanced Web Ranking provides also allows me to dig into Air Travel more specifically.

Air Travel

• Industry Change – Travel, in general, has seen a gradual decline as the news of the Coronavirus headed east from Wuhan to Seattle and then onto NYC and Europe. There have been increases in search demand for Air Travel largely due to people’s need to escape back home and to find more information on how to cancel their flights.
• Emerging Search Terms – diamond princess locator, spain, [airline name] cancellations, [airline name] customer service, domestic flights USA
• Shrinking Search Terms – train times, booking, destinations, [airline name], [destination name]
• Content People Need – There is a demand for transparent and aggregated content about how travel has been impacted by COVID-19. People are looking for guides on how to navigate their cancellation, flight tracking visualizations, videos and interactive experiences that clarify how flight safety has changed. People would also benefit from information on when their destinations will likely open back up, what deals airlines are offering for those time frames and how to approach emergency travel should you absolutely need to go somewhere. Travel aggregators and bloggers are better suited to prepare this content as they show comparisons between airlines and offer objective opinions.
• How Brands Can Help People – Brands can help people by putting them first by proactively notifying people of how to cancel flights and accommodations and not burying that content deep in their sites.
• SERP Opportunities – COVID-19 Announcements Schema, FAQs Schema, and Q&A Schema markup.

Fashion

• Industry Change – Fashion had a spike at the top of March and saw a small decline since the announcement of the pandemic. This is likely due to people losing their jobs and feeling the need to protect their cash. With their Searches, people are actively expressing a need for comfortable clothing and interest in-home workouts.
• Emerging Search Terms – home workouts, comfortable clothing brands
• Shrinking Search Terms – [name brands], sweatshirts, high-end fashion
• Content People Need – There is a demand for content on how to look good without leaving the home for your standard beauty routines, the best outfits for working from home, comfortable clothes from affordable brands and how to look good on Zoom calls. There is also a need for clarity as to what stores remain open during these times. Delivery is taking longer and people would prefer to be able to quickly pick up the things they need.
• How Brands Can Help People – Fashion brands can help people by offering deals and being clear about their logistics disruptions. Brands can also offer curbside pickup and local same-day deliveries.
• SERP Opportunities – COVID-19 Announcements Schema, FAQs Schema, Q&A Schema, LocalBusiness, and Product Offers Schema Markup

Personal Finance

• Industry Change – People are developing a fear of stability of the financial systems and a renewed focus on gold, silver prices, and blue-chip stocks is replacing interest in banks and lesser-known stock prices.
• Emerging Search Terms – gold prices, silver prices, life insurance, [blue chip stock names], life insurance, mortgage
• Shrinking Search Terms – [bank names], lesser-known stock share prices
• Content People Need – The uncertainty of the market creates a lot of fear and people begin to irrationally believe the value of money will drop dramatically so they begin to look for things to put their money into to retain wealth. Guides on how to invest, safeguard wealth and generally how to make it through a downturn are ideal for this space.
• How Brands Can Help People – Brands can help people by positioning themselves as trusted advisors and making a lot of free content available on how to understand how the market is reacting. Additionally, they put together interactive experiences and data-driven research to highlight how the investments have trended before, during and after previous downturns. Finally, there is a lot of misinformation around investments, where possible brands can look for opportunities to be a guiding light on that and the recent government updates such as changes in taxation with bite-sized video content.
• SERP Opportunities – FAQs Schema, Q&A Schema, Fact Check Schema, and Video Schema markup

Shopping

• Industry Change – Shopping demand is down across the board. Aside from entertainment, shopping has shifted away from discretionary items and focused on essential items, food, and safety.
• Emerging Search Terms – thermometer, soap, grocery shopping, comfortable clothing brands
• Shrinking Search Terms – high-end fashion, local stores, furniture, violent toys
• Content People Need – People need clarity on what items will make their quarantines more comfortable both physically and mentally. What are the items they must have to say safe and what are the items that will help them escape? This content will differ by geographic and psychographic makeup of each persona, so there are endless guides, listicles and video content that can be created to help people enjoy themselves until this is over. Beyond that, Shopping has the same issue as Fashion in that there is a lack of clarity about which brick and mortar stores are actually open and the likelihood that an order will be delivered.
• How Brands Can Help People – Fashion brands can help people by offering deals and being clear about their logistics disruptions. Brands can also offer curbside pickup and local same-day deliveries. Additionally, Shopping brands can lean heavily on the editorial content by sending more products to their work-from-home staff to visually demonstrate how it makes their quarantines better via video and written content. Finally, brands can consider data visualization to show what products are trending where and their availability to help re-distribute demand and help people discover products they may need for their area.
• SERP Opportunities – FAQs Schema, Q&A Schema, Video Schema, COVID-19 Announcements Schema, LocalBusiness, and Product Offers Schema Markup

Food and Drink

• Industry Change – One thing that will never change is people’s need to eat. According to Advanced Web Ranking data, the Food and Drink industry demand from Search is down 19% and people have refocused their demand toward food delivery.
• Emerging Search Terms – food delivery
• Shrinking Search Terms – food stores near me
• Content People Need – This situation is a bit more mutual than the others because restaurants are currently on the ropes due to the loss of foot traffic and on-site dining capabilities. This is an opportunity where companies and people should look to support restaurants so they survive the pandemic. With food and drink, the primary user concern is remaining healthy and discovering new places that are actually open to eat. Brands should look to create content to develop meal plans and introduce people to new restaurants that are still open. Restaurants should look to provide up to date information and menus on their websites to indicate that they are indeed open.
• How Brands Can Help People – A lot of food delivery is consolidated on services and sites such as GrubHub. These companies should consider lowering their fees in support of the mom and pops. The restaurants themselves should consider expanding their delivery distances, offering coupons and updating their menus to offer more healthy options.
• SERP Opportunities – COVID-19 Announcements Schema and LocalBusiness Schema markup

A New Tool from Advanced Web Ranking

As I mentioned earlier, the Advanced Web Ranking team was nice enough to prepare the data to support the insights in this post. In the process of doing so, they realized it is a good opportunity to expand their free public toolset. I personally get a lot of value out of their CTR Study tool in that we use it to compare click-through rate performance and build projections. Now they have added a live search demand tool for you to use in your day to day.

Using this tool you can get a quick snapshot of how global search demand has changed in a time period. Use it to get a sense of which verticals are performing and which are not.

You can also dig into the subcategories to see what the performance looks like. In the example below, we’re reviewing the Travel vertical which is broken down into Air Travel, Hotels, and various destinations.

As the data is aggregated across many sites, the tool is a great resource in helping to decipher search demand trends for a given space versus algorithmic trends.

How to Approach Search Marketing During COVID-19

Now, more than ever, we must remove abstractions like user, consumer, client, and customer and be acutely aware of the person on the other side of the web browser. Here are a few principles you should consider following with your Search Marketing efforts.

1. Be Empathetic – Look to help your audience before thinking of selling them something. We are all going through something unprecedented and we want to feel as though the brand we’re dealing with cares and understands. Tone-deaf brands will become long term running jokes.
2. Reassess your market segments – Any market segmentation work your brand is working from is far less applicable now. Review those market segments and layer the implications of their behavioral changes now that they are not leaving their homes regularly and they are less likely to spend money. Harvard Business Review shared a framework for this that you can consider adopting.
3. Watch the trends with cities and countries that are ahead of yours – China and San Francisco are ahead of NYC on the recovery curve. You may be able to learn from your customers in those areas before recovery in other areas and extrapolate from their behavior to get ahead of supporting people through content and keyword opportunities.
4. Measure Relentlessly – As always, you want to measure what keywords and content are meeting people’s needs and be continually proactive with keyword research to identify how else you can help people.

At iPullRank, we’re continuing this conversation deeply and we’re hosting a Marketing in the Age of COVID-19 webinar on April 22nd. We’ll be talking in great detail about these issues and how you can continue to help the world make it through with your marketing efforts. Sign up here and keep healthy!