Welcome to our weekly round-up of statistics from the world of search and slightly beyond.
I believe last week I mentioned rather pessimistically that I may struggle to top 10 stats a week. I’m happy to say that I was wrong. Here are more than 20 of the little rascals…
Google has revealed a bumper load of holiday shopping stats, including:
Micro-moments are replacing marathons
Rather than relying on day-long shopping marathons during Black Friday weekend, shoppers are now turning to their mobile phones throughout the day, all season long. More than half (54%) of holiday shoppers say that they plan to shop on their smartphones in spare moments throughout the day.
Big shopping days are becoming smaller
Last year, Google saw steady consumer shopping interest all season long, with fewer pronounced spikes on traditional shopping days.
While shoppers now spend 7% less time in each mobile session, smartphone’s share of online shopping purchases has gone up 64% over the last year, and 30% of all online shopping purchases now happen on mobile phones.
Shopping research starts earlier
The research also found that 61% of shoppers will have already started researching their purchases before Thanksgiving weekend, up 17% from last year.
Mobile influencing more purchases than ever before
Shopping-related searches on mobile have grown more than 120% year over year and are fast approaching those on desktop.
More than half (52%) of shoppers plan to use a smartphone for holiday shopping this year before they visit a store, and a huge 82% of smartphone users will consult their phone while in a store. This is an increase of 37% from last year.
Mobile is becoming the preferred purchase device for multi-device shoppers
According a new report from Criterio, four in 10 transactions now involve multiple devices.
Cross-device purchasers are 20% more likely to complete the transaction on their mobile device than the average user.
Google’s bounce-back growth attributed to increased mobile optimization
Merkle|RKG have released a Q3 2015 Digital Marketing Report covering the biggest names in search. Let’s break it down company by company…
- Google US paid search spending rose 18% year-over-year in Q3 2015, up from 12% growth the previous quarter.
- Click growth improved to 13%, following a 1% decline in Q2 2015.
- Google’s recent update to begin showing three text ads instead of just two has helped drive phone click growth from 56% year-over-year in Q2 to 106% year-over-year in Q3.
- Phone PLA clicks were up 166% in Q3.
- Google’s share of organic search visits has risen by nearly two points since hitting a low point in Q1.
Yahoo Gemini
- Yahoo continues to migrate search ad traffic to Gemini, with the platform producing nearly a quarter of combined Bing and Yahoo clicks in Q3. However, Gemini traffic appears to be largely cannibalistic of Bing Ads traffic
- Combined click growth across Bing Ads and Yahoo Gemini peaked in Q1 at 38% year-over-year following Yahoo’s deal to become the default search provider for Firefox
- In Q3, click growth had fallen to just 7%.
Bing
- Bing Ads’ US paid search spending growth slowed from 27% year over year in Q2, to 13% Y/Y in Q3
- Spending on Bing Ads and Yahoo Gemini combined was up 20% Y/Y.
Other juicy search stats from the research
These are filed under miscellaneous.
- Organic search visits increased 2% overall in Q3, down from 11% growth in Q2. Desktop visits fell 5% Y/Y, tablet visits fell 8% and phone visits rose 20%.
- Organic search click-through rates on non-brand phone queries fell 14% in the two months after Google began showing a third text ad above the organic results more frequently on phone searches.
- Phones produced 27% of paid search clicks in Q3, up from 20% a year earlier.
- Tablet click share fell to 16%, from 18% a year earlier. Phones and tablets combined for 32% of search spending.
- iOS devices produced 28% of paid search clicks in Q3, up from 27% in Q2. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Edge browsers combined for 19% of clicks, down from 22% in Q2.
Mobile reaches 5% of total media spending in Russia
eMarketer estimates that this year, advertisers in Russia will spend $430m on mobile internet ads, or 19% of all digital ad spending.
Mobile will quickly come to account for even more of the digital market, and by 2019 most digital ad spending will occur on mobile channels.
Smartphones overtake laptop PCs in Germany
For the first time, smartphone penetration in Germany overtook that of laptops according to Deloitte.
75% of internet users said they had access to an advanced handset in their household, compared with 72% who had a laptop. Tablets ranked third, with 45% of respondents saying they had one at home.
That’s your lot for this week. Now go take an extended lunch break. Just say that I said it was okay.