Despite the increase in zero-click results, a new study (.pdf) from BrightEdge shows that organic and paid search drive significantly more traffic to websites than other channels, including social and display advertising. is brought to The company found that paid and organic searches accounted for “his 68% of all trackable website traffic.”
Increased organic traffic. In fact, the percentage of traffic from organic search has increased over the five years BrightEdge has been doing this research. According to the company, 51% of his site traffic was served by organic search in 2014. That number has grown to 53% this year, with about 15% paid for.
According to BrightEdge, the data was generated in May 2019 from “thousands of domains and tens of billions of sessions.” The company excluded direct traffic from the study.
This report breaks down traffic data by major verticals. For B2B sites, the numbers were even higher than the typical traffic distribution. According to BrightEdge, over 75% of his B2B traffic comes from organic and paid searches.
Visit share comparison by channel
In the retail industry, the distribution of traffic between organic, paid, and ‘other’ was somewhat evenly distributed, with each of other and paid accounting for about 23% of visits, while organic provided 41%. . Hospitality was similar, but had more traffic from other (31%).
Social media traffic referrals were flat. The report says little positive about social media, which has remained flat since 2014 (around 5% of traffic), according to the company. Media and entertainment was one of the categories that brought in more traffic (8%).
BrightEdge also provides an estimated breakdown of revenue by channel for general traffic and specific verticals. Paid and organic search accounts for 72% of revenue in B2B and other verticals, according to the company. BrightEdge claims that social media provides less than 1% revenue on average.
Why you should care. Some marketers dispute some of the social media findings. However, assuming the report’s methodology is sound, it strongly confirms the continued value of organic and paid search. Indeed, the solid persistence of organic search in particular seems to betray the many structural changes in his SERP that have occurred over the past few years.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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About the author
Greg Sterling is a contributing editor for Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX Events, and VP of Market Insights for Uberall.
