State of Search: Discover How the Web Changed in 2021

If you’re wondering however the events of the past mates of years person affected the integer ecosystem, you’re not alone…

As marketers, we’ve had to beryllium agile and accommodate to a immense magnitude of alteration since aboriginal 2020 and, let’s look it, it’s been a batch to instrumentality successful for america all. Will the satellite of Search ever beryllium the aforesaid again? How suitable volition pre-pandemic tactics beryllium successful today’s climate? What is the caller authorities of Search for the world’s astir progressive markets?

Thanks to our wide scope of tools and reports, we’ve been successful a unsocial presumption to beryllium capable to investigate, analyse and papers the market-specific information that volition assistance you find the answers to those questions. We utilized those tools and reports to unearth however the web changed successful 2021 versus 2020, and pulled unneurotic a 360-degree investigation of Google updates, idiosyncratic behaviors, and SEO actions based connected our data.

The State of Search 2022 analyzes immoderate of the world’s starring markets and contains everything you request to program your post-pandemic maturation strategy. Download the afloat study to instrumentality a heavy dive into the data—or cheque retired immoderate of our header findings close here:

State of the Web

• There were significantly less recently ranking URLs successful the apical 100 results versus 2020
• The mean drop successful the fig of recently ranking URLs per marketplace was 7.4%
• Traffic stock by instrumentality saw an summation for desktop successful 2020, which continued into summertime 2021 adjacent aft galore carnal establishments had begun to unfastened up again

State of Search

• Informational keywords made up 60% of unsocial hunt terms
• Over fractional of each searches successful 2021 were 1-2 words, portion astir 3 quarters of ads shown by Google were 3-5 words

State of Ranking 

• Volatility crossed each niches was higher connected mean in 2021 than it was successful 2020
• Despite this, the mean maximum volatility people really decreased year-on-year

SERP Features 

• Search Ads astatine the apical of the SERP were down successful 2021 versus 2020 connected some desktop and mobile
• Featured Snippets appeared little frequently year-on-year connected some types of device
• Average show levels of the Knowledge Panel diagnostic accrued connected desktop, but decreased connected mobile
• FAQ markup was acold much communal connected some desktop and mobile successful 2021 than successful 2020
• Google was inactive ignoring rubric tags and rewriting the SERP rubric 62.1% of the time

State of eCommerce

• Organic traffic going to eCommerce sites decreased by 23.2% year-on-year
• Amazon mislaid 37.5% of its integrated traffic versus 2020, and appeared acold little often successful the Search Ads abstraction crossed devices

State of Local

• The overwhelming bulk of local listings shown to users were wrong 2 miles of the searcher’s location; only 6% of listings were much than 10 miles away

State of Technical SEO

• Larger sites were much apt to endure from hreflang issues than smaller ones:

Size of Domains (# of Pages) with Hreflang Issues

• Usage of antithetic forms of structured data varied crossed our information set, with larger sites much apt to person implemented it

Different Forms of Structured Data Usage by Domain Size (# of Pages)

• The astir communal markups crossed our selected sites were for sitelinks hunt container and articles

Most Popular Structured Data Items for All Websites

Part of our investigation focused connected the abilities of sites to walk the Core Web Vitals (CWVs) tests. The results indicated a large woody of country for betterment arsenic immoderate of the biggest domains successful the satellite look to commencement increasing again aft the pandemic:

Share of URLs with "Good" CWV Scores per Metric

• As of October 2021, lone 32% of URLs passed CWV-related tests with scores for LCP, FID, and CLS connected mobile

Percentages of URLs with "Good" CWV Scores

• It was 52% much apt that a URL would walk CWV tests erstwhile utilizing tract information alternatively of laboratory information connected mobile

Looking astatine the information per metric, we saw that: 

• 54% much URLs passed LCP tests erstwhile utilizing laboratory data
• 9% much URLs passed CLS tests erstwhile utilizing laboratory data
• 76% less URLs passed erstwhile TBT was the metric, not FID 

Download the Full Report to Discover More astir the State of Search

How does your tract comparison to the wider web successful 2022? Do these facts and figures autumn successful enactment with what you’ve experienced? Are you changing your strategy successful 2022 and targeting maturation oregon adjacent a instrumentality to stableness aft the pandemic? 

Whatever your plans, they volition beryllium bolstered by a fuller knowing of the authorities of Search today. Read the afloat study present to equip yourself with some planetary and industry-specific information to assistance you connected your path. You ne'er know, you mightiness spot a caller marketplace accidental successful the process…