Shocking: Just 13% of the info on Google is actual search results!

I bet you thought that if your company built a well structured website embedded with keywords in all the right places that your potential customers would certainly find you in a Google search. After all, you’ve been told that this is key to effectively generating traffic on the Internet, right? Yeah, well now… Not so much.

In reality, if you run a search on Google today, you’ll see that only 13% of the information that appears on the screen is actual search results.

According to a study done by Tutorspree.com, the rest of the page is taken up by ads and Google products like a map, Google + navigation bar, and Google Adwords. (see graphic above.)

What’s even more astounding is that your businesses chances of showing up in a mobile search are even worse. Run a search on your iPhone for “Italian food” for example. What will you see? In a major metropolitan city you are likely to see that half the page is an ad, and the other half is a Zagat listing (Google owns Zagat). Scroll down and you’ll see a map and then Google’s local listings. In fact, you’d have to scroll past 4 pages before you would see a single organic search result.

The data shows that the market for traditional search is flattening while mobile is growing rapidly. A recent Google/Nielsen study found that 50% of search starts on a phone. Approximately half of mobile search is for local listings and of all the conversions (store visit, phone call or purchase) that result from a mobile search 55% happen in the first hour. This clearly has enormous implications for mobile marketing and Google isn’t waiting on the sidelines.

But Google needs to be careful not to appear to be so transparent about its motives as to have lost its objectivity.

If organic search results are any indication, Google’s at risk of giving users the impression it’s more interested in its own needs than ours. And that’s not a good place for any company to be, regardless of its size.

…This much I know.

-Jeanine