Google Reaches One Billion Users
One billion? Yep. For May of 2011, Google sites were visited by more than 1 billion unique users from around the world, marking the first time that threshold has been crossed for a specific website. Of course, this includes the various Googles for different countries, as well as Google News, Google image search, and so on. But still, it’s all Google. And did you notice that “google” is one of those words that starts to sound like nonsense when you say it over and over and over?
That’s One Billion Potential Customers…
…well, no, of course it’s not. Unless you’re McDonald’s or Coca-Cola. But it does mean that people use Google to search. Lots of people. A billion people. Because unlike other sites, such as Facebook or various Microsoft sites, Google is pretty much used exclusively for search. Sure, there’s a bit of email in there, but Google accounts for about 67% of all searches. The next biggest share of search? Yahoo, at about 9%. Not even close.
Or Maybe Zero Customers
The fact is, if your website isn’t ranking high on Google searches for keyword phrases related to your business, you’re in trouble. Here are some more fun stats:
Know the click-through rate for the top two positions on the second page of search results? Only .66% each. And it goes down from there. If you’re not on that first page, you’re going to have a very hard time finding customers. Or more accurately, customers are going to have a hard time finding you.
In a nutshell, that is why Google is so important for your business, and why good SEO is so important for your website. People are looking for things on Google. If you want to be found, that’s where you need to be.
| Google Rank | Click-through % |
| 1 | 38.19 |
| 2 | 21.73 |
| 3 | 11.94 |
| 4 | 6.42 |
| 5 | 5.35 |
| 6 | 4.51 |
| 7 | 3.77 |
| 8 | 2.89 |
| 9 | 1.61 |
| 10 | 2.59 |
I am definitely a solid Google user, and I generally only trust the first page of results to be the ones that will really help me. It does seem odd to me, though, that in your chart ranking 9th has a lower click-through % than ranking 10th. Is it just because 9th is overlooked but 10th is right there at the bottom?
Amazing that number two yahoo comes in at a whopping 9%…can you even call ‘em competition?
That’s the US figure; Google’s dominance is even greater on a global scale, around 83%. http://marketshare.hitslink.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4 And Yahoo drops to about 6%.
It’s a stinkin’ monopoly. If your site doesn’t rank for Google, you’re done. Not sure if I like that idea!
@Sabrina, yes, I’m sure it’s because it’s at the bottom of the page; it’s just easier to see than 9th.
@Max, did you see the FTC is investigating Google for antitrust violations? Of course it’s not the first time they’ve faced such scrutiny, but I guess this is the biggest investigation they’ve undergone: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/25/business/la-fi-google-ftc-20110625