Half of Searches End Without a Click

An estimate published this week

An analysis published this week estimated that just over half of the Google searches it measured in June ended without a click to any website.

It is an estimate, built from clickstream data: records of what a large panel of browsers did, scaled up. The precise figure matters less than what it describes.

Some of those searches were followed by a second, better-worded search. Many others ended because the answer was already on Google's page.

For a local business, that changes what the website is for, and what the listing is for.

Answered on the results page

For a local business, the results page now answers most of the quick questions itself.

• Opening hours, shown in the listing beside the map.
• The phone number, with a call button on phones.
• Directions, one tap away in the map app.
• The star rating and reviews, read without leaving Google.
• Photographs of the premises, the stock and the work.
• Common questions, answered on the listing itself.

The second is the one that hides a customer. A call made from the listing never touches your website, so a search that ended without a click may have ended with the phone ringing.

Not always a lost visit

For a publisher, a search answered on Google's page is a visit lost. For a local business, it is often a customer who got what they needed faster.

Somebody checking whether you close at five does not need your home page. If the listing says five and is right, they come in.

Directions work the same way. A tap that opens the map app is a customer on the way, and it never appears in the website's analytics.

The risk is a listing that is wrong. A search that ends on the wrong closing time ends at a locked door, and the customer blames the business, not Google.

The listing does the website's old work

Google My Business is now the first page many customers see, and for some it is the only one.

That makes its accuracy as important as the website's. Hours, holiday hours, the phone number, categories, service area and website link all need checking against reality.

Then fill in the parts that answer questions without a visit: a description, your services or products, recent photographs, and the questions customers have asked, answered by the business itself.

The searches that still click

The other searches still lead somewhere, and the website's job is to be that somewhere for the searches that need more than a line.

Those are the ones a listing cannot answer: what something costs, what is included, whether you do a particular job, how long it takes, how two options compare.

They tend to come from people further along in deciding, which makes them the visits worth having.

A home page that says welcome and lists services in a sentence each will not win them. A page that answers one of those questions properly can.

Facts in the listing, answers on the site

Google sometimes lifts a short answer from a page into a box at the top of the results, with a link. A one-line fact may then be read without a visit.

A page with the full answer still gets the visit from people who need the rest: prices with context, a process explained, photographs of real work, a list of what to prepare.

Write those pages for the person comparing rather than the person checking: the details that make a decision possible, in plain words, with the price stated or explained.

That is the division worth accepting. Facts that fit in a line belong in the listing; answers that need a page belong on the website.

A worked example

A tool and equipment rental yard in a Fraser Valley town rents everything from carpet cleaners to mini excavators. Its owner noticed website visits drifting down while the phone stayed busy.

The listing's Insights explained part of it. Calls and direction requests from the listing far outnumbered visits to the website.

The listing itself showed what was wrong: Sunday hours a year out of date, no photographs of the equipment, and three questions from customers sitting unanswered.

The listing was corrected and filled in, with holiday hours entered months ahead, photographs of the main machines, and every question answered.

The website, which had one rentals page and a price list in a PDF, gained a page for each main category: daily and weekly rates, deposit, what is included, towing requirements and delivery.

Those were the questions callers had been asking. Now the people searching for them had somewhere to land.

Measuring the listing as well

Judged by website visits alone, a year like this one can look like decline when customers are simply taking a shorter path.

Google My Business Insights shows how many people called, asked for directions or visited the website from the listing. Read those beside the website's figures, comparing each month with its counterpart last year.

Calls from the listing rising while website visits fall need not mean fewer customers. It can be the same customers, arriving by a shorter route.

And ask new customers how they found you. One who says Google may never have seen the website at all.

The counter-case

The estimate comes from one source, a panel of browsers rather than every search, and searches in your trade and town may look quite different.

A business whose customers mostly need hours and an address will do much of its business through the listing. The website still matters, as the page the listing links to and the one place the business fully controls.

And Google can change what it shows at any time. The listing sits on someone else's page; the website is yours.

Keep the listing complete and correct, and give the website the questions that need a page.

This week

1. Check your listing's hours against the door.
2. Enter holiday hours for the rest of the year.
3. Answer every question on the listing.
4. Add recent photographs of real work or stock.
5. List the questions callers ask that need a page.
6. Write one of those pages properly.
7. Compare the listing's figures with last year's.

Step one is the one that cannot wait. A search that ends on the listing ends on whatever the listing says, so a wrong closing time sends a customer to a locked door.

Finding out which searches already reach your pages is covered in the searches that find you by accident.

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West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.