Post by account_disabled on Mar 5, 2024 3:22:00 GMT -5
March 2021 marked the beginning of Google's long-awaited move to mobile-first indexing for all websites. In conjunction with this shift, we analyzed the search landscape to see how mobile and desktop trends have taken shape in recent years. Two areas of interest guided our study: See how traffic trends and user behavior on mobile compare to desktop by analyzing traffic data for the 1,000 most visited domains from Traffic Rank's global reports for 2018, 2019, and 2020. Highlight discrepancies between mobile and desktop SERPs by taking the top 50,000 keywords by search volume from Semrush's US database and comparing search results. Studio Mobile vs. Desktop: Key Findings Search traffic increased 22% in 2020 compared to 2019 for the world's 1,000 most visited websites. Over the period analyzed, 66% of all site visits came from mobile devices.
Bounce rates were higher and total time on site shorter on both mobile and Venezuela Phone Number desktop devices; this indicates that user engagement is increasingly difficult to achieve. Only 17% of websites maintained their position in the SERPs from both mobile and desktop, and 37% of URLs were actually excluded from the top 10 when the search query was made from a mobile device. Let's examine these results in more detail and see what they might mean. Global search traffic trends Comparing search data for the world's 1,000 most visited websites from 2019 to 2020, we see that absolute traffic volume increased by 22%. These sites attracted 10% of total global traffic in 2018, but that figure doubled to 20% by the end of 2020. This traffic came predominantly from mobile devices, which generated approximately 66% of all site visits lo last year, while the share of desktop traffic was also higher in 2020 than in 2018.
This was largely due to the coronavirus pandemic, but is a clear sign of the global dominance of these leading sites; the larger they are, the more traffic they attract when more searches are made on mobile and desktop. User engagement signals Alongside the increase in traffic levels, there has been a clear decline in user engagement on these sites, as behavioral indicators such as bounce rate and time spent on the site have both shown a constant negative trend, both in search on mobile devices and desktop. Average time on site: Mobile vs. Desktop As you might expect, visits on desktop devices were 40% longer than those on mobile devices in 2020. Average time on site for desktop users actually increased 3% in 2020, while the mobile equivalent continued its annual decline. Overall, users have been spending less time on sites on average since 2018, regardless of what device they use, which is perhaps another sign of shrinking attention spans . Average Bounce Rate: Mobile vs. Desktop The slight increase in time on site from desktop also led to an increase in average bounce rate for almost all of 2020.
Bounce rates were higher and total time on site shorter on both mobile and Venezuela Phone Number desktop devices; this indicates that user engagement is increasingly difficult to achieve. Only 17% of websites maintained their position in the SERPs from both mobile and desktop, and 37% of URLs were actually excluded from the top 10 when the search query was made from a mobile device. Let's examine these results in more detail and see what they might mean. Global search traffic trends Comparing search data for the world's 1,000 most visited websites from 2019 to 2020, we see that absolute traffic volume increased by 22%. These sites attracted 10% of total global traffic in 2018, but that figure doubled to 20% by the end of 2020. This traffic came predominantly from mobile devices, which generated approximately 66% of all site visits lo last year, while the share of desktop traffic was also higher in 2020 than in 2018.
This was largely due to the coronavirus pandemic, but is a clear sign of the global dominance of these leading sites; the larger they are, the more traffic they attract when more searches are made on mobile and desktop. User engagement signals Alongside the increase in traffic levels, there has been a clear decline in user engagement on these sites, as behavioral indicators such as bounce rate and time spent on the site have both shown a constant negative trend, both in search on mobile devices and desktop. Average time on site: Mobile vs. Desktop As you might expect, visits on desktop devices were 40% longer than those on mobile devices in 2020. Average time on site for desktop users actually increased 3% in 2020, while the mobile equivalent continued its annual decline. Overall, users have been spending less time on sites on average since 2018, regardless of what device they use, which is perhaps another sign of shrinking attention spans . Average Bounce Rate: Mobile vs. Desktop The slight increase in time on site from desktop also led to an increase in average bounce rate for almost all of 2020.