Google remains the dominant search engine, but organic visibility does not translate into a click on every query. The latest available figures show a market led by Google, large differences between industries, steep rewards for top rankings, and measurable reductions in traditional clicks when AI summaries appear.
Table of contents
- Google’s share and search scale
- Organic traffic benchmarks by industry
- Branded and non-branded traffic
- How ranking position affects clicks
- The open web and zero-click behavior
- AI Overviews and organic traffic
Google’s share and search scale
StatCounter reported that Google accounted for 91.1% of worldwide search-engine market share across all devices in August 2026. The same measurement put Bing at 4.5%, Yahoo at 1.23%, Yandex at 0.99%, DuckDuckGo at 0.70%, and Baidu at 0.62%. These are worldwide, all-device market-share figures for August 2026, so they describe the search market rather than the percentage of visits any individual site receives.
| Search engine | Worldwide share, all devices | Measurement period |
|---|---|---|
| 91.1% | August 2026 | |
| Bing | 4.5% | August 2026 |
| Yahoo | 1.23% | August 2026 |
| Yandex | 0.99% | August 2026 |
| DuckDuckGo | 0.70% | August 2026 |
| Baidu | 0.62% | August 2026 |
Source: StatCounter Global Stats.
Google reported more than 5 trillion searches annually in a January 2025 internal-data snapshot. That figure indicates the scale of the opportunity, but total searches are not the same as organic website visits: a search can end on Google’s properties, produce an ad click, or end without a result click.
Google also said AI Overviews reached more than 1.5 billion monthly users in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Ahrefs analysis of 55.8 million AI Overviews across 590 million searches. The figure is a reported audience scale for that period, not a forecast of future organic traffic.
Organic traffic benchmarks by industry
Conductor’s 2024 Organic Search Traffic Benchmarks Report measured June 2023 through May 2024 and found that organic search generated an average of 33% of overall website traffic across seven industries. The benchmark varied substantially by sector. Professional-services domains recorded the highest average share at 39%, followed by technology at 36%, education and healthcare at 35% each, travel and hospitality at 31%, and finance and retail at 27% each.
| Industry | Average organic-search share |
|---|---|
| Professional services | 39% |
| Technology | 36% |
| Education | 35% |
| Healthcare | 35% |
| Travel and hospitality | 31% |
| Finance | 27% |
| Retail | 27% |
Source: Conductor, 2024 Organic Search Traffic Benchmarks Report, covering June 2023-May 2024.
The same report estimated the average retail organic traffic value at $22.9 million when valued at equivalent paid-search costs. This is an estimated cost-equivalent value, not revenue and not a direct cash return from rankings. The report also estimated average organic traffic value at $8.9 million for finance, $12.3 million for travel and hospitality, $3 million for healthcare, and $5.5 million for technology, using the same equivalent paid-search-cost framing.
These benchmarks are useful for context, but they are not a target for every site. Industry mix, brand strength, search demand, geography, and the way a business categorizes traffic can all affect the observed share.
Branded and non-branded traffic
Organic traffic also differs in whether users search for a company or product name. In Conductor’s June 2023-May 2024 benchmark, education traffic averaged 34% branded and 66% non-branded organic search traffic. Healthcare averaged 44% branded and 56% non-branded, while professional services and technology each averaged 48% branded and 52% non-branded.
Finance and retail showed the reverse balance: finance averaged 72% branded and 28% non-branded organic traffic, while retail averaged 66% branded and 34% non-branded. Travel intermediaries received 81% of their organic traffic from non-branded searches.
| Sector | Branded | Non-branded |
|---|---|---|
| Education | 34% | 66% |
| Finance | 72% | 28% |
| Healthcare | 44% | 56% |
| Professional services | 48% | 52% |
| Retail | 66% | 34% |
| Technology | 48% | 52% |
| Travel intermediaries | 19% | 81% |
Source: Conductor, 2024 Organic Search Traffic Benchmarks Report, June 2023-May 2024. The travel-intermediary branded share is shown as the complement of the reported 81% non-branded figure.
The pattern matters when interpreting growth. A site can increase branded searches through awareness while another gains reach from non-branded informational queries. Both appear as organic traffic, but they represent different discovery conditions.
How ranking position affects clicks
Backlinko’s analysis of about 4 million Google search results found that the top organic result received 27.6% of clicks, while the top three results received 54.4% of all clicks. Only 0.63% of Google searchers clicked a result from the second results page. The study was published in 2019, and its dataset analysis period was not specified, so these figures should be treated as historical study results rather than current universal CTRs.
In that analysis, moving up one Google ranking position was associated with a 32.3% relative CTR increase. Moving from position 2 to position 1 was associated with a 74.5% relative CTR increase. These are relative associations from the study, not guarantees for an individual query.
SISTRIX’s Google study, published in July 2020, found that the first mobile organic result averaged a 28.5% click rate and the second averaged 15.7%. When a mobile results page contained only organic listings, the first result received 34.2% of clicks. A first-position result with sitelinks received 46.9%.
Page layout changed the observed distribution. On Google mobile results pages with an app-style answer, SISTRIX measured 16.3% for the first organic position and 16.7% for position 2. The result shows why ranking position alone does not fully describe click opportunity: features above or around the listings can alter how users distribute clicks.
The open web and zero-click behavior
The 2024 US Google clickstream study by SparkToro and Datos found that 360 of every 1,000 searches produced a click to a non-Google-owned, non-ad-paying open-web property. In the EU sample, 374 of every 1,000 searches produced a click to the open web. Almost 30% of clicks after Google searches in the combined US and EU study went to Google-owned properties.
The study also reported that almost half of mobile Google searches in both the US and EU ended the browsing session, at more than twice the desktop rate. About 20% of Google searches that produced at least one click produced clicks on more than one result. These measures describe 2024 US and EU Google searches, not all search engines or all geographies.
Source: SparkToro and Datos, 2024 Zero-Click Search Study.
AI Overviews and organic traffic
Pew Research Center analyzed 68,879 Google searches by US adults in March 2025. An AI-generated summary appeared on 18% of searches. Traditional organic-result clicks occurred on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% when no AI summary appeared. Only 1% of visits to Google pages with an AI summary included a click on a link cited in the summary.
Users ended their browsing session on 26% of Google pages with an AI summary, compared with 16% of pages without one. Around two-thirds of searches in the dataset ended with the user browsing elsewhere on Google or leaving without clicking a search-result link. These findings measure behavior in March 2025 and should not be read as a permanent rate.
AI-summary visibility also varied by query form. Pew found summaries for 8% of one- or two-word searches, 53% of searches containing 10 or more words, 60% of searches beginning with question words such as who, what, when, or why, and 36% of searches containing both a noun and a verb. The median AI summary was 67 words long.
Google AI summaries cited three or more sources in 88% of cases in Pew’s March 2025 sample. Wikipedia, YouTube, and Reddit together accounted for 15% of AI-summary sources and 17% of standard-result sources in the study’s samples. Source: Pew Research Center, “Do people click on links in Google AI summaries?”.
For SEO reporting, these numbers separate visibility from referral traffic. A page can be present in a search result or cited in an AI summary while receiving no traditional organic click. Ranking reports, Search Console clicks, branded-versus-non-branded mix, and landing-page outcomes therefore describe different parts of Google organic search performance.