A mere 148 keywords account for 15% of all Google searches.
That’s just one of many striking insights from a new analysis of nearly 332 million queries for more than 320,000 unique query terms released today by Rand Fishkin of SparkToro, based on data provided by Datos. (Disclosure: Datos, like Search Engine Land, is a Semrush company.)
Why we care. Organic search traffic appears to be increasingly going to fewer websites over time. In 2024, it is harder than ever to be visible and stand out in Google Search – especially if you often compete with Google’s AI Overviews and other search features.
The 148 terms. Most of them are navigational queries. Ten of the most searched terms are:
YouTube
Gmail
Amazon
ChatGPT
Google Translate
WhatsApp Web
Google Maps
Pornhub
Google Docs
By the numbers. This analysis also classified Google searches by brand, intent, and topic:
Branded vs. generic searches: 44% of Google searches are for branded terms, with the rest focused on unbranded, generic queries.
Intent: 51% of searches are informational, 33% are navigational, 14.5% are commercial, and just 0.69% are transactional.
Here’s a screenshot of the topics:
What’s they’re saying. Just a few thousand query terms make up a quarter of all Google searches, and that seems to be increasing all the time, Fishkin wrote, adding: