Semrush releases a new report analyzing search trends between 2018 to 2020.
A new report by Semrush analyses how Google’s long-anticipated move to mobile-first indexing will impact search in 2021 and beyond. The report includes traffic trends and user behavior from 1,000 domains and compares mobile and desktop experiences.
Semrush found that search traffic in 2020 increased by 22% for the top 1,000 domains, and 66% of this traffic came from mobile devices. The data also suggests that user engagement is on the decline with high bounce rates and shorter time on site across the board.
Only 17% of websites retained their positions across both mobile and desktop SERPs, while 37% of URLs were thrown out of the top-10 when a search query was made from a mobile device.
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Global Search Trends
Between 2019 and 2020, absolute search traffic for the top 1,000 domains increased by 22%. However, these sites accounted for 10% of global search traffic in 2018, but their share jumped to 20% by the end of 2020. This traffic was predominantly mobile, with devices driving approximately 66% of all site visits last year. The share of desktop traffic also increased in 2020 compared to 2018.
Despite the improvements in traffic, user engagement witnessed a drop. This could be indicative of shortening attention spans. Similarly, bounce rates also increased by 3% on average for mobile devices compared to desktops, but this gap narrowed to 0.2% by the end of 2020. Brands must do more to engage their device-agnostic audiences coming from SERPs.
Semrush’s analysis of the top 50,000 search queries revealed that 8% of search results in the U.S. have m-dot domains implying that a majority of the sites in the dataset are simply mobile-friendly and not designed for mobiles specifically.
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Comparing Google’s mobile vs. desktop search results, Semrush found certain patterns in the way SERP features appeared:
The choice of the device did not seem to matter for Top Stories, Local Pack, and People Also Ask features. But desktop users were twice as likely to get a Google ad and a Featured Snippet, while mobile users saw 12.5X more images and 3X more videos in organic search.
What Must Marketers Do To Remain Competitive in the Mobile-First Indexing Era?
First things first, marketers and SEO practitioners need to identify benchmarks for their industry and compare that with potential site issues such as load times and site architecture.
Tools like Semrush offer position tracking features that provide regular updates on mobile rankings for target keywords within a target location. By monitoring unique metrics like Visibility (based on SERP positions and CTR estimates) and Share of Voice, marketers can track changes to their online presence in real-time.
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In an era where consumers increasingly are becoming device agnostic, it is critical to ensure that you offer both desktop and mobile interchangeability when it comes to the purchase journey. Optimize for mobile and make it easy for people to switch to desktop to complete a purchase by letting them save shopping carts, for instance.