Google is increasingly becoming a place where people go to find a specific website or company, but not where their journey really begins — it’s more often where their journey ends. However, the data can make this seem a little confusing.
As shared by Rand Fishkin, this chart shows which sites drive the most traffic on the web:
Looking at that, it seems that you should really be investing in getting more traffic from Google. However, that chart is a bit misleading because it simply shows where people come from, but not what motivated the words in their search.
Rand goes on to share this chart, which shows where people spend their time online:
You can see that search is just a tiny piece of that (10.25%). Your customers are on those other sites, where they learn about you and your industry, read reviews, talk with others, and form their opinion on next steps. Once that opinion is formed, they often head to Google to navigate to your website (or the site of your competitor).
Google shouldn’t be ignored, but the data you see for traffic coming to your site likely isn’t really showing what leads people to find you in the first place.
