200 SEO Statistics For 2025 Based On New Studies

2024 was full of surprises for an SEO. 2025 is no different. So, how will the state of SEO change in 2025?

Expect ongoing Google core algorithm updates and ranking fluxes. Also, AI integrations, user-intent optimization, and EEAT-friendly content are here to stay. 

Having spent nearly 15 years in search engine optimization, I have compiled the best and the most up-to-date SEO statistics for 2024 that can bring a vast difference to your SEO strategy.

Let’s discuss the most important SEO statistics based on original research that are a must-read for digital marketers. 

Major SEO Statistics

Here are the predominant SEO stats that you should know:

1. Google accounts for 80% of desktop searches worldwide, followed by Bing at 11%, and Yahoo at 2.8%. The mobile search percentage for Google is mind-boggling 93%, followed by Yandex at 2%, and Baidu at 0.91%. (Global Stats)
2. There are over 99,000 searches on Google every second and around 5,940,000 per minute. (DemandSage)
3. 91% of people agreed that SEO positively impacted website performance and marketing goals. However, the most significant SEO challenges to adapt in 2025 are AI advancements, algorithm updates, historical SEO neglect, internal roadblocks, and SEO governance. (Search Engine Journal)
4. 25.6% of desktop searches and 17.3% of mobile searches result in zero clicks. (Search Engine Land)
5. Articles exceeding 3,000 words receive 3.5 times more backlinks than their shorter counterparts. (SEO.AI)
6. Over the past year, 30.2% of respondents identified core and general algorithm updates as the primary cause of traffic fluctuations. (Search Engine Journal)
7. The average SEO ROI is more than 550%. SEO offers peak results in the second or third year of the campaign. (Neil Patel)
8. More than 50% of AI Overviews on desktop and 60% on mobile do not link to the top organic result. (SEMrush)
9. Organic Search drives 53% of all website traffic. (Skale)
10. Content production is the most difficult task for SEO, while technical optimization is the second-most challenging task for SEO professionals. (Statista) 
11. 45% of SEOs feel that AI will have a large positive impact on website optimization. 45% agreed to a slight positive impact, while 6% voted for a slight negative impact.  (Search Engine Journal)
12. SEO leads offer a 14% closing rate, with 95% of traffic going to the first page of the search results. (WebFX)
13. 94% of online content receives no external links, and only 2.2% of content is linked from multiple websites. (SEO.AI)
14. Rich results capture 58% of clicks, whereas non-rich results have a click-through rate of 41%. (AIO SEO)
15. The top organic search result on Google has a click-through rate (CTR) of 31.7%, making it ten times more likely to be clicked than the result in the tenth position. (On The Map)
16. Content delivery networks (CDNs) are good for SEO. A website with a CDN loads 2x faster. Faster CDNs with data centers around the world improve caching, speed up your website, and protect your site from being overloaded. Using CDNs improves page experience and also leads to better conversions. (Google)
17. Outsourcing SEO can lead to cost savings of 30-70% compared to maintaining an in-house team. (Near)
18. The average click-through rate for Google’s first organic search result is 31.7%, while the second and third results have click-through rates of 24.7% and 18.3%, respectively. (Color Whistle)
19. AI overviews appear for 8.71% of searches. The Relationships niche leads with 26.62% of keywords triggering AI outputs, followed by Food and Beverage at 24.78% and Technology at 18.11%. Travel, Healthcare, Legal, News, and Politics each have less than 1%. (SE Ranking) 
20. Almost 60% of Google searches conclude without a click. (Search Engine Land)

(SE Ranking survey indicating that AI overviews are just a small fraction of the overall searches that happen on Google: Source)

On-Page SEO Statistics

1. Titles between 40 and 60 characters have the highest organic click-through rates. (Backlinko)
2. Google modifies (rewrites) 61% of title tags. (Search Engine Journal)
3. Page titles that contain a question had a 14.1% higher CTR than those that don’t. (On The Map)
4. Enhancing content (like making it EEAT-friendly can boost blog traffic by up to 2,000%. (SEOptimer)
5. Almost 80% of ecommerce sites face the issue of slow page speed. (Statista)
6. More than a quarter of top-ranking pages lack meta descriptions. (Adam Connel)
7. Only 33% of websites meet the Core Web Vitals standards. (SEOProfy)
8. 56% of the top three positions in search results are held by ccTLDs (country code top-level domains). (Search Engine Land)
9. Subdomains make up only 3% of domain structures in SERPs, primarily appearing in top positions in multilingual markets. (Search Engine Land)
10. For personal injury law firms, the age of a domain plays a significant role in search rankings, with older domains typically moving up one rank on search engine results pages for every six years they’ve been active. (Rankings.io)
11. The average landing page conversion rate across all industries is 6.6%. (Unbounce)
12. Landing pages that include webinar promotions typically achieve a conversion rate of 22.3% on average. (GetResponse)
13. Google holds 89.74% of the search market, making semantic search optimization crucial. (SurgeGraph)
14. AI-driven SEO boosts rankings by 30% in six months, thanks to NLP optimization. (SEOmator)
15. Mobile-friendly companies achieve a 67% higher conversion rate compared to non-mobile-friendly companies. (OddBall Marketing)
16. Over 54.67% of global web traffic comes from mobile, highlighting the need for mobile-friendly designs to boost Page Experience. (Statista)

Off-Page SEO (Backlink) Statistics

1. 95% of pages have zero backlinks. (Backlinko)
2. The typical age of a page ranking on the first page is over two years. (On The Map)
3. The top Google search result usually garners 3.8 times as many backlinks as positions two through ten. (SEMrush)
4. 26% of pages receive links from fewer than three websites. (WebFX)
5. Trusted domains have higher click-through rates in search engines than less popular domains. (Backlinko)
6. New pages from high DR websites (≥80) rank faster on the first page than those from low DR sites (<30). (On The Map)
7. The average cost of a paid editorial backlink is around $360. (Adam Connel)
8. Link builders who use social media generate 22% more links than those who do not. (WebFX)
9. Titles that start with “What” or “Why” receive 25.8% more backlinks compared to other topics. (Meetanshi)
10. On average, you need an average of backlinks from 164 unique domains to rank for local search terms. (Search Engine Land)
11. Brands with blogs attract 97% more links to their websites than those without blogs. (SEOptimer)
12. Digital PR using channels like HARO (now Connectivity) is the most popular link building strategy used by 67.3% of marketers. (Meetanshi)
13. 67% of marketers use the Ahrefs Domain Rating as a primary metric to measure a website’s popularity and trust. (SEOwind)
14. 89.1% of 755 link builders agree that no-follow inbound links influence rankings. (SEOProfy)
15. 96% of websites appearing in Google’s top 10 results have over 1,000 links from unique domains. (Search Engine Land)
16. More than 36% of link building experts believe that writing and publishing linkable assets is the best strategy for acquiring natural backlinks without violating Google’s guidelines.  (Meetanshi)

Search Engine Statistics

1. Google displays up to 400 search results for each query and Bing displays up to 700. (Google)
2. Google sends 63.41% of traffic to a website. (SEO.com)
3. On average, a session on Google lasts less than one minute. (HubSpot)
4. In March 2024, Google dominated the UK search engine market with a 93.61 percent share across all devices. Bing followed as a distant second with about 3.94 percent, and Yahoo! held roughly 1.35 percent. (Statista)
5. Google is the leading search engine in Canada, capturing over 92% of the market share. Bing held a distant second place with 4.72%, followed by Yahoo! with 1.46% of the market share. (Statista)

6. Google processes around 99,000 searches per second, totaling 8.5 billion daily and 2 trillion annual searches worldwide. (SEO ai)
7. Microsoft’s integration of ChatGPT into Bing has resulted in a 30% increase in monthly active users, marking the highest usage in a decade. (Pymnts)
8. As of December 2024, Chrome leads the browser market with 68.38%, followed by Safari at 17.09% and Edge at 4.92%. (Statcounter)
9. In 2024, 22.2% of SEO practitioners (up from 8.6% in 2023) reported that algorithm changes are their primary concern. (Search Engine Journal)
10. 50.9% of internet users search for news and events, while 43.4% search for products and brands. (Demand Sage)
11. Yahoo receives 700 million mobile searches every month. (Market US)
12. 50% of Google users click on a result within 9 seconds of searching, with the average time to click being 14.6 seconds. (Backlinko)
13. “People Also Ask” is the most common SERP feature, appearing in 96% of search queries across industries. (Conductor)
14. 75% of users find paid search ads help them locate information more easily, while 33% click on ads because they directly address their query. (Clutch)

Local SEO Statistics

1. 80% of local searches lead to users becoming customers. (SEO.com)
2. Local searches result in 80% conversions. (WebFX)
3. Business listings that include a website receive 25-35% more clicks. (SEOptimer)
4. 28% of local searches lead to a purchase within a day. (Intergrowth)
5. The volume of “near me” searches has surged by 500% in recent years. (SEO.com)
6. 57% of local search queries originate from mobile devices or tablets. (AIO SEO)
7. Businesses with ratings between 3.5 and 4.5 stars generate more revenue than those with higher or lower ratings. (Search Engine Land)
8. Businesses with complete GMB profiles are 70% more likely to drive location visits and 50% more likely to be considered for purchase. (Google)
9. In the past 12 months, 58% of consumers have used voice search to find local business information. (BrightLocal)
10. 25% of small business websites lack an H1 tag, and nearly 2% are marked as noindex. (Fresh Chalk)
11. The Google Local 3-pack appears in 93% of searches with local intent. (SagePixel)
12. Businesses with more photos on their GBP receive 520% more calls, 2,717% more direction requests, and 1,065% more website clicks. (Search Engine Land)
13. Inconsistent NAP details can lead to a 73% loss in consumer trust, damaging a brand’s perceived reliability. (Brandignity)
14. Websites with localized content are 70% more likely to rank in multilingual searches. (AOK Marketing)
15. The global local SEO tools and software market is expected to see significant growth, with a substantial compound annual growth rate from 2024 to 2031. (Cognitive Market Research)

Keyword Statistics

1. Keywords ranging from 10 to 15 words in length receive 1.76 times more clicks. (Backlinko)
2. Only 0.10% of keywords have a monthly search volume ranging from 1,000 to 100,000. (SEO.com)
3. 50% of keywords have four or more words (WebFX)
4. 15% of all Google searches are unique and have never been conducted before. (AIO SEO)
5. 71% of marketers use strategic and user-intent driven keywords to improve their organic positioning. (SEOwind)
6. There are 3.8 billion keywords with a search volume of less than 10. (SEOwind)
7. Around 8% of keywords are question-based. (Intergrowth)
8. 86.83% of all keywords lead to an SGE result. (Authoritas)
9. As of January 2025, the top three most searched keywords on Google are YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp Web. (SEMrush)
10. Google Keyword Planner is 45.22% accurate, and overestimates search volumes 54.28% of the time. (Ahrefs)
11. SEO delivers a higher conversion rate (2.4%) compared to PPC ads (1.3%), highlighting the effectiveness of intent-based keyword optimization. (WPbeginner)
12. 90.3% of queries in Google Search Console receive 10 impressions or fewer. (Backlinko)
13. Out of all keywords, 12,472 (12.47%) trigger AI-generated responses, showing a 5% increase from previous research, while 87,212 (87.20%) do not trigger AIOs, and 328 (0.33%) result in a technical error where Google fails to generate an AI response.

14. Navigational keywords make up about 10% of the most popular keywords but drive 22% of the search volume. (Marketingprofs)
15. Studies show that branded keywords generate a 1299% ROAS, while non-branded keywords achieve just 68% ROAS. (DreamData)

Video SEO Statistics

1. Search results that include videos generate 157% more organic traffic. (AIO SEO)
2. 95% of marketers agree that video marketing has helped them improve brand awareness. (SEOwind)
3. 85% of marketers prefer short-form videos over long-form. (Vidico)
4. Videos are 50 times more likely to achieve organic ranking on Google compared to text-based content. (Zupo)
5. Videos appearing on the first page of YouTube have an average duration of 14 minutes and 50 seconds. (Backlinko)
6. Almost 82% of buyers report that video content has influenced their purchasing decisions. (Wisernotify)
7. 80% of users will abandon a video if it begins to buffer or load slowly. (WebFX)
8. Currently, 51.07% of mobile SERPs in the US include video content, with impressive figures in Europe: 56.5% in Italy, 52.28% in Finland, and 46.41% in the UK. (SE Ranking)

9. 80% of users can recall a video advertisement they watched in the past month. (Crisp Co)
10. Videos on your target landing pages can increase conversions by more than 80%. (Saleslion)
11. 51% of marketing professionals worldwide consider video the content type with the best ROI. (Crackitt)
12. Google uses video thumbnails in 26% of search results. (BrightEdge)
13. Consumers now spend 58.8% of their average daily social media time watching videos, up from 33.0% in 2019. (sagepixel)

AI in SEO Statistics

1. 65% of businesses use AI to generate better SEO results. (SEMrush)
2. AI tools improve SEO rankings by 49.2%. (SEO Mator)
3. 37% of SEO professionals use AI tools for managing their SEO tasks. (Backlinko)
4. 86% of businesses have already integrated artificial intelligence into their SEO plan. (SEOClarity)
5. Companies that use AI in their SEO content strategies have reported up to a 45% boost in organic traffic and a 38% rise in conversion rates for e-commerce. (SEO Mator)
6. The average AI overview length is around 157 words. (SurferSEO)
7. 13.08% of top-performing content on Google is now AI-generated. (SEO Mator)
8. 36% of marketers have agreed that it takes less than an hour to produce content per week using artificial intelligence tools. (Statista)
9. Based on new data by HubSpot, professionals who use AI are able to save an average of 12.5 hours per week. (HubSpot)
10. 52% of the sources highlighted in Google AI overviews appear within the top 10 search results. (SurferSEO)
11. Using AI-based keyword tools can improve organic traffic by up to 40%. (Social Champ)
12. 70% of marketers utilize AI for brainstorming and outlining, while 40% employ AI to formulate comprehensive strategies. (Written)

13. 56% of marketers believe that content generated by AI surpasses that created by humans. (Synthesia)
14. Almost 60% of companies intend to boost their AI investments in 2025. (Hostinger)
15. 42% of marketers use artificial intelligence (AI) tools for writing or generating content a few times per week or daily. (Statista)
16. A significant number of marketers are adopting AI technologies in their strategies. More than half (53.8%) plan to deploy AI and machine learning in the near future, with many already using tools like chatbots, augmented reality, and voice search. (Influencer Marketing Hub)

Voice & Mobile SEO Statistics

1. The average voice search result is 29 words long. (AIO SEO)
2. Mobile searches conducted via voice are three times more likely to focus on local queries than those done through text. (SEOptimer)
3. Mobile users are three times more likely to utilize voice search. (AIO SEO)
4. Over 1 billion voice searches are conducted each month. (SEO.com)
5. 78% of local mobile searches result in purchases at physical locations (offline). (SEOProfy)
6. By 2025, it’s estimated that 44.6% of the U.S. population will be using voice assistants monthly. (Intergrowth)
7. The average American spends between 5 and 6 hours daily on their phones, apart from job-related tasks. (Intergrowth)
8. Amazon Echo is the most popular device in the category, holding a 65% market share in the US, followed by Google Home with 26%. (Backlinko)

9. 27% of the world’s online population prefer to search on Google using their voice when browsing on mobile. (Google)
10. By 2025, global smart speaker sales will surpass $30 billion (BusinessWire)
11. Mobile accounted for 60% of global online traffic in January 2024. (Statista)
12. The average voice search query consists of 29 words, highlighting a shift towards more conversational and detailed search patterns. (Intern Growth)
13. By 2025, it’s projected that 75% of households will own at least one smart speaker, with voice commerce sales expected to reach $80 billion annually. (Ibbonline)
14. Over 80% of Google Assistant’s voice search answers come from the top three search results in 80% of cases. (WebFX)
15. By 2025, voice assistant shopping is expected to reach a staggering $164 billion in transaction value. (Blu ai)

SEO ROI Statistics

1. 60% of businesses are pleased or very pleased with their SEO results, whereas about 10% of them are unhappy or very unhappy with their SEO performance. (Statista)
2. 43.9% of marketers use keyword rankings as a metric to measure SEO performance. (Adam Connel)
3. 50% of marketers agree that keyword rankings and organic traffic are the two ways to measure the success of SEO campaigns. (SEOwind)
4. A website that loads in one second has a 3x higher conversion rate compared to a site that takes around 5 seconds. (SEOwind)
5. The average return on investment for ecommerce stores is $2.75 for every $1 invested. (WebFX)
6. Real estate SEO offers 1,389% ROI in as little as 9 months. (First Page Sage)
7. Websites with 30 to 35 backlinks typically attract over 10,500 visits per month. (Sixth City Marketing)
8. 49% of marketers report that organic search yields the highest return on investment. (G2)
9. A high-quality SEO campaign can deliver an average ROI of 748%, meaning businesses earn $7.48 for every dollar invested in SEO. (SagePixel)
10. The page that appears first in a Google search enjoys a click-through rate exceeding 30%. (Luca Tagliaferro)
11. The average ROI ratio for SEO is 22:1, meaning businesses earn $22 for every $1 spent. (SEMrush)
12. 50% of clients who performed a local search on their mobile devices visited a business within a day. (Think With Google)
13. The average Domain Rating of a voice search result is 76.8. (Backlinko)
14. 40.7% of all voice search answers are sourced from Featured Snippets. (Seoprofy)
15. A smartphone optimized site that takes longer than three seconds to load sees a 53% increase in bounce rate. (Sixth City Marketing)

SEO Content Writing Statistics

1. Blog posts longer than 3,000 words consistently attract more backlinks. (SEO Mator)
2. Content scores do not correlate with higher rankings. Clearscope, Surfer, MarketMuse, and Frase, all lead to weak content scores and ranking correlations. (Ahrefs)

3. 58% of B2B marketers agree that content marketing leads to improvement in conversions. (SEMrush)
4. “How-to” articles generate 1.5 times more organic web traffic compared to other content types. (AIMultiple)
5. 58% of marketers consider “original written content” the most crucial element of their strategy. (Keycontent)
6. 45% of respondents view attracting quality leads as the top challenge in content marketing. (SEOWind)
7. 39% of marketers use AI tools to create content outlines, while 58% employ them for writing blog posts. (SEMrush)
8. SaaS blogs contribute 22.55% to a website’s total organic traffic, making it the most significant organic channel. (Bluerocket)
9. 36.7% of marketers cite consistently creating engaging visual content as one of their major challenges. (Siege Media)
10. Content marketing produces three times as many leads per dollar compared to paid search campaigns. (Keycontent)
11. Publishing 2-6 times a week results in 50% more clicks. (AIMultiple)
12. 40% of content marketers use AI tools to assist in developing overall strategies, including persona creation. (Siege Media)
13. Businesses with blogs have 434% more indexed pages than those without blogs. (SEOptimer)
14. Only 3% of blogs on the internet consistently publish articles that exceed 2,000 words. (SEOProfy)
15. 68% of incoming links to a website are built through content marketing efforts. (Meetanshi)

Alternative Search Engines Statistics

1. Google’s global search market share dropped from 91.38% to 86.99% in April, while Bing rose to 5.8% and Yahoo to 3.06%.(Search Engine Land)

2. As of November 2024, Baidu holds a market share of 54.36% in China. (The Egg)
3. ChatGPT search has over 200 million active users. (Backlinko) 
4. Perplexity.ai is a major alternative search engine with 15 million users. (Search Engine Journal)
5. 82% of Google search results and Perplexity search results match for healthcare-related queries. (Search Engine Land)
6. Ecosia is the most popular alternative search engine in Germany, with 0.51 percent to 1.19 percent market share. (Statista)
7. Google is the most popular search engine in Africa, with a 95.71% market share.  (Statcounter)
8. Google has a market share of 97% in India, followed by Bing with 1.22, and Yahoo with 0.54%. (Statcounter)
9. DuckDuckGo has reached a new record of 100 million searches per day. (Search Engine Journal)
10. 2024 data shows that the Ask.com question search engine receives approximately 36 million visits per month. (ReliableSoft)
11. Naver is the leading search engine in South Korea, commanding around 70% of the local search market. (Data for SEO)
12. Brave Search has quickly grown, processing over 27 million searches per day. (Brave)
13. Waldo Search Engine receives over 34K monthly domain traffic. (Backlinko)
14. Mojeek, an independent search engine from the UK, has reached a significant milestone by indexing over 6 billion web pages. (London Daily)
15. 70% of mobile searchers who recently made a purchase have clicked to call a business directly from the search results page. (Google)

SEO Industry Statistics

1. In 2024, the SEO industry’s estimated annual value reached approximately USD 90 billion, showing an increase from USD 75 billion in 2023. (Sci-Tech)
2. The SEO services market size is expected to reach $170 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 17.6%. (The Business Research Company)
3. The average salary for an SEO Manager is $68,000 to $83,000. (First Page Sage)
4. The international SEO software market will reach around USD 145.1 billion by 2033. (Market.us)
5. The average cost of monthly SEO retainers is between $500 – $1000. (Ahrefs)
6. In 2025, the average salary for a Junior SEO Executive is $45,000 to $53,000. (First Page Sage)
7. 53% of companies use SEO to increase their “web presence.” (SEO.co)
8. In the SEO industry, 30% of the revenue comes from retail trade and consumer goods, followed by 21% from travel, entertainment, and media. The Internet and telecom sectors contribute 18%, while other businesses account for 11%. Both financial services and the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors each generate 10% of the industry’s revenue. (SEO.co)

9. An SEO Specialist earns between $52,000 to $65,000. (First Page Sage)
10. The typical hourly rates for SEO services range from $75 to $100. (AIO SEO)
11. The average cost of local SEO services is around $1557 per month. (Ahrefs)
12. The most common project-based pricing for freelancers falls within the range of $101 to $250. (NinjaPromo)
13. Around 60% of agencies have an hourly rate below $100. (NinjaPromo)
14. The Head of SEO earns between $71,000 to $108,000. (First Page Sage)
15. 29.0% of those surveyed predict AI will drive the most significant changes in the SEO industry. (Search Engine Journal)