{"id":9814,"date":"2025-03-04T00:05:58","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T08:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/?p=9814"},"modified":"2025-03-05T10:03:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T18:03:47","slug":"new-research-how-often-do-americans-search-google-which-search-verticals-do-they-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/new-research-how-often-do-americans-search-google-which-search-verticals-do-they-use\/","title":{"rendered":"New Research: How Often Do Americans Search Google? Which Search Verticals Do They Use?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last quarter, we published an extraordinary analysis<\/a> of hundreds of millions of Google searches alongside our clickstream panel partners at Datos (A Semrush Company)<\/a>. That analysis opened many marketers and creators\u2019 eyes to the reality of how people use Google in 2024, i.e. navigational-heavy, and significantly weighted toward the top few thousand queries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This quarter, we\u2019re back to examine several key questions that arose from both that research, and (next week) the ongoing fear (hope?) that Google search is losing ground to AI tools. Thanks, once again, to the incredible generosity of the Datos team, we\u2019re able to present credible, high-quality numbers that solve long-held mysteries of how people engage with Google.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Briefly, before we do that, an important caveat: This study and Datos\u2019 panel measure web browser activity<\/em><\/strong>. That means searches performed on platforms like the Google Maps mobile app, or those done in Google\u2019s search app for Android aren\u2019t included. Thus, for this study, we\u2019ve concentrated on desktop activity\u2013growth rates on desktop closely parallel what happens on the observable mobile web, but can\u2019t take into account what\u2019s going on in mobile apps. Nevertheless, it\u2019s an excellent baseline to measure change over time, and it\u2019s certainly indicative of desktop search behavior and any loss to AI tools, which happens primarily on desktops and in web browsers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many searches do Americans perform on Google?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot of bad data on the Internet taken from estimates that cite questionable sources endlessly in a circle, but thanks to Datos\u2019 team, we can finally provide concrete numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Active American desktop web users in 2024 performed, on average, 126 unique Google searches each month<\/strong>. The median was 53 Google searches\/month. If we use three other facts we know: that Google has a 90.15% market share in search globally (Statcounter<\/a>), that 5.35 billion humans are active on the Internet each month (GWI<\/a>), and that ~81% of Internet users perform use a search engine at least once a month (GWI<\/a>), and one assumption (that mobile and desktop volumes are similar) we can estimate that Google serves at least 492 billion searches per month (or ~16.4B per day).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a move that I can only consider serendipity from the data gods, Google, a few hours prior to the publication of this post, announced that they had “more than 5 Trillion searches in 2024<\/a>.” Our math above puts the number at 5.9 Trillion, a little high, likely because we analyzed US users, who tend to have more search activity per person. Still incredible that they’d come out with numbers the day we publish to help back up the veracity of these results, and the quality of Datos’ panel. \ud83d\ude0e<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s break down our estimates here for clarity:<\/p>\n\n\n\n