Direct Searches Dominate Mobile Web Traffic: Semrush Research

A few years ago, mobile traffic was anticipated to exceed that of the desktop. In 2016, Google was even talking about mobile-first indexingOpens a new window , expecting the trend to continue. However, in 2020, COVID-19 happened, and people were restricted to their residences. After years, there was a decline in mobile traffic vs. desktop. In some industries, desktop usage came close to that of mobile in 2020 and 2021.Â

But what does the â€œnew normalâ€ look like for the search industry? Semrush recently conducted a study to understand the key mobile traffic trends for this year and the drivers behind the mobile traffic dynamics.

Mobile Web Traffic May Not Have Depended on the Pandemic

In 2020, mobile traffic dropped after the pandemic hit the world. The trend continued in 2021 despite the economy slowly reopening during the second half. That said, in May 2021, mobile traffic was 30% higher than in March 2022, despite the pandemic-related restrictions. This implies that the assumption that stay-at-home and usage of desktops had something to do with a drop in mobile traffic may be wrong. And reopening the economy may not necessarily improve mobile traffic.

The penetration of mobile across geographies varies. And different countries had different timelines for relaxing the restrictions. So, could this have affected traffic patterns? The study found that between April 2021 to March 2022, the U.S. had the lowest rate of mobile surfers, and mobile traffic hardly reached 70%. On the other hand, mobile traffic in Brazil crossed 93% of the overall traffic. In Australia, it was 82%. This again indicates that pandemic measures may have nothing to do with mobile traffic.

See more: The Pandemic Reshaped Mobile Customer Experience: 6 Things Brands Should Do Nextâ€¯

Mobile Web Traffic Originates From Direct Searches

The study showed that mobile traffic originates from direct searches. For example, mobile users usually visit websites through bookmarks or directly from a search tab. Search is the next biggest channel for mobile surfers, except for India, the U.S., and Mexico, where it is third. Referral links are the third most popular source, except in these three countries. Social media brings much lower traffic, and traffic from paid channels never exceeded 0.3%.Â

Country-by-country mobile traffic breakdown by channel

Source: The State of Mobile reportOpens a new window

The significance of direct traffic implies that companies should â€œinvest in the brandâ€ and customer experience.

Direct Web Traffic Dominates Mobile Landscape for All Industries

For the study, Semrush primarily considered the education, finance, food and beverage, healthcare, and retail industries. The study found that direct traffic dominated the mobile landscape for all industries, bringing at least 45% of the total visits. That said, the food and beverage and healthcare industries seem to rely heavily upon search traffic as the percentage was comparable to that of direct traffic.Â

Key mobile traffic channels for selected industries

Source: The State of Mobile reportOpens a new window

This means that brand awareness and customer loyalty may not have played a single dominant role in generating mobile traffic; SEO was equally important.

While paid channels still play a minuscule role in mobile traffic, the five industries did get higher traffic from paid sources. The education and retail industries spent more on display ads than video ads than the others. The retail industry spent the most on both display and video ads, followed by the finance industry compared to others.

But when we look at the quarter-on-quarter(Q-o-Q) impressions compared to the spending, finance was the only industry that showed tangible efficiency with its videos and efforts. The biggest spend was in Q2 2021, but performance-wise, they had the largest impressions count in Q4 2021. This means the companies in the industry had managed to grow visibility with fewer ad dollars.Â

Regarding the retail industry, retail sites seem to have doubled their ad spends in Q4 2021, probably due to the shopping season. But they also got more than double the results in the form of impressions, meaning the outcome outweighed expenses.

Popular Apps See a Downward Download Trend on iOS

The study found that from April 2019 to April 2022, games, finance, health and fitness, social networking, shopping, and food and drink emerged as the most popular mobile app categories.Â

When looking at the download trends on iOS, the trend appeared negative from April 2021 to March 2022 compared to the previous year across all popular categories. While shopping apps lost the largest margins, health and fitness apps saw the lowest drops. Looking at Android, gaming was the only category that saw a downward trend, while others showed an upward trend. Finance apps saw the most downloads.

More Ad Spend May Not Necessarily Mean More Installs

The study tried to find if paid campaigns played a major role in app installs. Regarding Android App Store, gaming apps were the biggest ad spenders, and their spending only increased over three years. That said, food and drinks apps increased ad budgets by 65% last year. It was also seen that app downloads went up for these two categories last year. Does it mean more ad spend equals more downloads?Â

If we compare it to the Apple search installs trends as well as CPA, install, and ad expense trends together, it was the shopping and food and drink apps that did something right with advertising as opposed to gaming apps. While year-on-year (Y-o-Y) costs per acquisition (CPA) grew, apps in these two categories achieved higher performance from their ad efforts.

See more: Top 5 Mobile App Marketing Trends to Watch for 2022

Key Takeaways

There are a few learnings a business can take away.Â

Despite the fall in mobile traffic over the last two years, mobile is still a dominant force. Hence, you should continue putting efforts into delivering impeccable mobile experiences. That said, do not take mobile traffic for granted. Some industries like education have good desktop user shares. Hence, you should focus on delivering a seamless omnichannel experience to your audience to grow your business.
User behavior cannot be tied to the pandemic anymore. Many changes in the business world over the last two years have been attributed to the pandemic. However, mobile traffic cannot be one of them. Hence, take the realities as they are today and shape your strategies instead of waiting for things to â€œreturn to normal.â€
Invest in building brand awareness. Given that most of the mobile traffic is from direct searches, you should focus on building brand awareness and customer loyalty so that your website gets bookmarked or searched directly on mobile devices. Simultaneously, work on optimizing your website and content for mobile searches.
You need to have constant access to mobile traffic insights from your particular industry and competitors. This helps you spot ongoing shifts and have relevant benchmarks to shape your strategy accordingly.

By staying on top of the ongoing shifts in mobile trends, you can develop appropriate strategies to maximize the returns on your mobile efforts.

What trends do you expect when it comes to mobile traffic this year? Share with us on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .Â