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120+ Key SEO Statistics [2025 Update]

Search is in flux. AI is reshaping how users search for information and interact with search results — and how we, as SEOs, need to respond. The old playbooks don’t cut it anymore.

To make smart moves, you need the right data. Which is extremely time-consuming to find!

That’s where this roundup comes in.

We’ve compiled a list of 2024–2025’s most reliable SEO stats, organized into 7 categories, paired with practical takeaways.

Let’s dive in!

Technical SEO Stats

  1. There are ~400 billion documents in the Google web index. (Zyppy)
  2. The average web page load time is 2.5s on desktop and 8.6s on mobile. (ToolTester)
  3. 88.5% of the surveyed said the top reason they leave a website is slow loading time. 73.1% named poor mobile responsiveness as a major reason. (GoodFirms)
  4. An e-commerce site that loads under 1s had 2.5x higher conversions than a site that loads under 5s. (Portent)
  5. 88.6% of websites use HTTPS. (W3Techs)
  6. One in three websites passed Core Web Vitals in 2022. (Ahrefs)

Page speed and mobile responsiveness directly affect revenue. With only one in three sites passing Core Web Vitals and HTTPS adoption nearing 90%, there’s still plenty of room to stand out by nailing the fundamentals.

Content & On-Page SEO Stats

  1. The average top-ranking result has a CTR of 9.28%. For positions two and three, it is 5.82 and 3.11% respectively. (ResearchGate)
  2. 54% of all clicks go to the first 3 Google search results and 69% to the top 5. (Up Inc.)
  3. 46.08% of clicks in Google Search Console go to hidden terms. (Ahrefs)
  4. 52.65% of Google searches have informational intent, 32.15% navigational, 14.51% commercial, and only 0.69% transactional. (SparkToro)
  5. Every day, 15% of Google searches use keywords never used before. (Think With Google)
  6. The average word count of a blog post is nearly 1,400 words. (OrbitMediaStudios)
  7. Only 3% of blogs on the internet regularly publish articles that are 2,000+ words. (OrbitMediaStudios)
  8. 72.9 % of websites have missing or empty meta description tags (Ahrefs, 2023)
  9. Google rewrites 76% of titles shown in SERPs (John McAlpin study), which is 15% more than in 2022 (Zyppy)
  10. Over 22.2% of websites use no structured data. (W3Techs)
  11. Of sites that do use structured data, 69% use Open Graph, 54.3% use X Cards, and 51.5%. (W3Techs)

More than half of all clicks go to the first three search results, and Google rewrites titles and descriptions in the majority of cases. This doesn’t mean you can ignore metadata, but you should prioritize high-quality content that matches user intent and structured data adoption.

Long-form posts are the norm, but only a tiny fraction of blogs regularly publish 2,000+ word pieces. That’s an opportunity for those who do.

User Behavior & Engagement Stats

  1. In 2024, almost 60% of EU Google searches and over 58% of American ones resulted in zero clicks. (SparkToro)
  2. 36% of queries result in clicks to non‑Google sites (SparkToro)
  3. 65% of Google users click on organic search results (vs paid). (Backlinko)
  4. 59% of users click just one result per Google search. (Backlinko)
  5. Not even 10% of Google searchers scroll to the bottom of the first page. (Backlinko)
  6. The average bounce rate is 56.8% for mobile users and 50% for desktop users. (ToolTester)
  7. Only 0.44% of users visit the second page in Google SERPs. (Backlinko)
  8. On average, visitors view 4.9 pages per session on desktop devices and 4.2 pages on mobile devices. (ContentSquare)
  9. An average session duration is 5:13 minutes for desktops and 2:21 minutes on mobiles.  (ContentSquare).
  10. JavaScript errors are the main cause of frustration for website visitors. (ContentSquare)
  11. The average mobile conversion rate is 2.03%. On desktops, it’s 3.81%. (ContentSquare)
  12. Returning visitors are more likely to convert than new ones (3.05% vs 1.88%). (ContentSquare)

Searchers rarely scroll or click past the first page. Most only visit a single result before moving on.

With bounce rates hovering above 50% and mobile conversions lagging desktops, UX is critical. 

The takeaway: clear, fast, and trustworthy pages win more of the limited attention span.

Voice Search & Mobile Usage Stats

  1. 62.5% of all global website traffic comes from mobiles. (Statista)
  2. 63% of shoppers use mobiles to find information about brands and products. (HubSpot)
  3. In Q1 2025, 79% of retail site visits and 70% of online orders came from smartphones. (Statista)
  4. Africa has the highest percentage of mobile internet users. 74% of all traffic there comes from mobiles. (Statista)
  5. YouTube has the highest mobile audience reach (76%), followed by Gmail (68%) and Facebook (67%). (Statista)
  6. The voice assistant user count in the U.S.A. is expected to reach 157 million in 2026 (up from 142 million in 2022). (Statista)
  7. Only 13% of marketers have incorporated voice search optimization in their SEO strategy. (HubSpot)
  8. Voice search results load faster by 52% than average search results. (DemandSage)
  9. In 2024, users ran nearly 20 billion Google Lens searches every month. 1 in 5 were shopping-related.  (Think With Google)

Nearly two-thirds of global traffic comes from mobile, and in e-commerce, smartphones drive most visits and orders. 

Meanwhile, billions of voice searches happen each month, but only 13% of marketers have optimized for them. 

Getting ahead means preparing content for conversational queries and mobile-first browsing habits.

AI & SEO Stats

  1. Google Search volume in 2024 was 373x larger than in ChatGPT. (SparkToro)
  2. Google Search has 290 times more users than Perplexity. (Datos)
  3. Google Search grew by 20% in 2024 (SparkToro)
  4. 99% of GenAI users (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc) continue to use search engines (Datos)
  5. Only around 16% of traditional search users also use GenAI (also, not instead). (Datos)
  6. 48% of the most popular news websites across ten countries block OpenAI’s crawlers, and 24% Google’s AI crawler. (Reuters Institute)
  7. AI Overviews appeared in 30% of search results in January 2025 (Search Engine Journal).
  8. Over 1 billion users viewed AI Overviews each month in 2024. (Think With Google)
  9. AI overviews appear for 99.2% of informational and 10% of commercial/transactional queries (Ahrefs)
  10. AI overviews grew by 116% between March and April 2025. (Search Engine Land)
  11. AI overviews reduce CTRs by 34.5%. (Ahrefs)
  12. Average web search traffic has decreased by 21%, while the AI traffic increased nearly 10x between June 2024-2025 (Ahrefs)
  13. Around 0.25% of websites’ total traffic on average comes from AI chatbots and AI overviews. (Ahrefs)
  14. The average LLM visitor is worth 4.4 times as much as an average traditional organic search visitor. (Semrush)
  15. AI overviews can increase CTRs for branded queries by 18.68% and homepage visits by 10.7%. (Adapt Worldwide)
  16. Only 10% of ChatGPT’s short-tail query results overlap with Google’s top 10 SERP (URLs). For Perplexity, the overlap is 65%. (Ahrefs)
  17. Branded web mentions have the strongest correlation with AI Overview brand visibility (0.664). However, for their correlation with Perplexity and ChatGPT visibility is much weaker (0.30 and 0.15, respectively). (Ahrefs)
  18. Backlinks have a weaker correlation with AI Overview visibility than brand factors like mentions, branded anchors, or branded search volume. It’s around 0.218. (Ahrefs)
  19. 1 in 4 brands get no AI Overview mentions. (Ahrefs)
  20. 50% of links in ChatGPT come from Business/Service websites. (BrightLocal)
  21. YouTube is the most-cited source in AI Overviews, followed by Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit. Their citations shares were 23.29%, 18.41%, 18.31%, and 9.37%, respectively. (Surfer)
  22. Reddit citations increased  by 87% in July-August 2025 and account for more than 10% of all ChatGPT citations (PPC Land)
  23. ChatGPT sends 83% of referral traffic, followed by Perplexity (10%), Copilot (4%), and others (3%). (Siege Media)
  24. ChatGPT is the fastest-growing GenAI platform, followed by Gemini, Copilot, Claude, and Perplexity. (Datos)
  25. AI assistants send users to 404 pages 2.87x more often than Google Search. ChatGPT has the highest hallucination rate, with 2.38% of all citations resulting in 404. (Ahrefs)
  26. 86.5% of content in the top 20 search results is at least partially AI-generated. (Ahrefs)

While more and more searchers use GenAI to look for information, Google still handles hundreds of times more queries, and the majority of users keep using search engines. 

The challenge for SEOs is balancing traditional ranking strategies with new tactics to capture visibility in AI-powered results.

  1. The global market for SEO is expected to reach $143.9 billion by 2030, up from $82.3 billion in 2023.  (Research and Markets)
  2. 78.2% of SEOs work on a retainer basis. (Ahrefs)
  3. The most popular monthly retainer is $501-$1,000, the most common hourly rate is $75-$100, while the most per-project rate is $2,501-$5,000. (Ahrefs)
  4. For those with 10+ years, the monthly retainer can reach $3,000. (SeoProfy)
  5. The average cost of SEO services is $25-199 per hour. $150 is the most common rate. (SeoProfy)
  6. The median annual SEO salary in 2024 was $49,211, while the average $58,288. (Ahrefs)
  7. Businesses spending $4,000+ per article are more likely to report content marketing success than those spending under $500. (Siege Media)
  8. The average monthly affiliate marketer salary is $8,038. (Authority Hacker)
  9. Affiliate marketers with 3+ years of experience earn nearly 10x more than beginners. (Authority Hacker)
  10. Education, travel, and beauty are the most profitable affiliate niches. (Authority Hacker)
  11. Nearly half of all companies used both in-house staff and freelancers/agencies to power their SEO efforts in 2024. (Conductor)
  12. Leveraging AI is the key sales and marketing priority for B2B companies in 2025. (SageFrog)
  13. Search advertising spending is expected to reach $483.5 billion by 2029. (Statista)
  14. Google will garner 70%+ of US search ad spending in 2026. This is 10x more than Microsoft. (Emarketer)
  15. Websites, blogs, and SEO came up as the top marketing channels for ROI in 2024 for B2B brands. (HubSpot)
  16. SEO campaigns achieve a positive return on investment (ROI) within 6 to 12 months. (FirstPageSage)
  17. SEO delivers an 8x ROI, which is double the PPC ROI. (NP Digital)
  18. The top-ranking industry per ROI on SEO is real estate (1,389% with 13 months to break even). (FirstPageSage) 
  19. The SEO ROI for B2B SaaS is 702% and it has a breakeven average of 7 months. (FirstPageSage) 
  20. YouTube’s global ad revenue exceeded $10 billion in Q3 2024. (Statista)

SEO keeps proving its ROI — with industries like real estate seeing 1,000%+ returns. 

No wonder retainers are rising, projects often top $5,000, and the global market is set to exceed $140B.

General SEO Stats

  1. 96.55% of all pages get zero search traffic from Google. (Ahrefs)
  2. The most searched keyword in the U.S. and globally is “Youtube”. (Ahrefs)
  3. Google accounts for 89.89% of the search engine market share across all devices. (StatCounter)
  4. Google is used by 93.82% of mobile and 79.1% of desktop searchers. (Statista)
  5. Google accounts for 63.41% of all US web traffic referrals. (SparkToro)
  6. 44-46% of Google searches are branded. (SparkToro) (Ahrefs) 
  7. The average site has lost around 21% of its organic traffic over the last 12 months. (HigherVisibility)
  8. Only 5.7% of pages rank in the top 10 search results within a year. (Ahrefs)
  9. 2+ years is the average page age. (Ahrefs)
  10. Getting traffic is the biggest challenge for 45.3% of affiliate marketers. (Authority Hacker)
  11. 21.1% of web traffic on Google comes from the US. (Statista)
  12. Google leads the search engine market in B2B with an 84.9% share, making it the main platform for buyers. (FirstPageSage)
  13. In 2025, Aliexpress.com is the most popular e-commerce site in the world. (Semrush)
  14. Google handles 8.3 billion searches a day — 96k every second, 5.7 million every minute. (Exploding Topics)
  15. Google handles more than five trillion searches annually, which is roughly 14 billion searches per day, and 9.5 million searches per minute (SearchEngineLand).
  16. In 2025, 2.53 billion people used YouTube. (Statista)
  17. YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine (McDougall Interactive)
  18. 50% of consumers use social media to “discover new products”. (Salesforce)
  19. Facebook is the biggest source of social media referral traffic, accounting for 3.62% of American referral traffic. YouTube and Reddit follow with 3.48% and 3.15%, respectively (SparkToro)
  20. The Walt Disney Company properties were ranked first among the most popular multiplatform web properties in the United States, with over 249 million visitors from mobile and desktop connections. (Statista)

Google still drives nearly 90% of global search traffic and dominates referral traffic across industries. 

But competition is fierce! Over 96% of pages get zero traffic, and only 5.7% rank in the top 10 within a year. The lesson: success takes patience, authority building, and a clear content strategy.

Conclusion

In 2025, SEO is no longer just about ranking in SERPs. You must meet users wherever they search, from social media, AI chatbots, through smart speakers, and visual search.

The data shows both the risks (zero-click searches, shrinking organic visibility) and the opportunities (ROI that outpaces every other channel).

If there’s one lesson, it’s this: agility wins.

The SEOs who thrive will be the ones who treat search as an evolving ecosystem, not a static checklist. And over the next 12 months, focus not on surviving change but on seizing the opportunity.