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Can anyone think of any evidence to back up the claim a third of google searches are for images?

by ZiiS 7y ago

Mathnerd314 7y ago
The main source seems to be Jumpshot 2017 clickstream data, these posts on Moz are within 2 days of each other, the first is cited for the "a third" quote in TFA: https://moz.com/blog/seo-photos-visuals-graphics-whiteboard-friday https://moz.com/blog/seo-photos-visuals-graphics-whiteboard-... https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed But "a third" seems a bit misleading as the big pie chart in the second only shows 26% (closer to a quarter). From the bars in the middle of https://sparktoro.com/blog/2018-search-market-share-myths-vs-realities-of-google-bing-amazon-facebook-duckduckgo-more/ https://sparktoro.com/blog/2018-search-market-share-myths-vs... (also Jumpshot data) we can see that Google Images has been steadily decreasing in share, it might indeed have been a third in 2010-2014 but today is probably below 20%. Then there's this Quora answer from 2010, it has a 1:5.5 ratio of images to search from Alexa, i.e 15%: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-ratio-of-Google-Image-traffic-to-Google-Web-Search-traffic https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-ratio-of-Google-Image-traf... So that's two different sources of clickstream data that mostly agree, 33% is too high but 20% is plausible. The numbers are not really going to get more accurate than that unless you can hack into Google.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  I wonder if these numbers are for traffic as in bandwidth or for discrete requests. Counting by bandwidth would explain the surprising representation of image search.
robocat 7y ago
And if most image searched are searches for porn, then the total number of searches is perhaps not relevant. And when I am searching for an image (and I never Google for porn), I am very rarely interested in the landing pages or text that comes up.
lexicality 7y ago
It's wildly important for e-commerce. I personally will use google image search if I'm looking for a particular instance of something generic (like replacing no-name chinese electronics)

Can anyone think of any evidence to back up the claim a third of google searches are for images?

by ZiiS 7y ago

Can anyone think of any evidence to back up the claim a third of google searches are for images?

The main source seems to be Jumpshot 2017 clickstream data, these posts on Moz are within 2 days of each other, the first is cited for the "a third" quote in TFA: https://moz.com/blog/seo-photos-visuals-graphics-whiteboard-friday https://moz.com/blog/seo-photos-visuals-graphics-whiteboard-... https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed But "a third" seems a bit misleading as the big pie chart in the second only shows 26% (closer to a quarter). From the bars in the middle of https://sparktoro.com/blog/2018-search-market-share-myths-vs-realities-of-google-bing-amazon-facebook-duckduckgo-more/ https://sparktoro.com/blog/2018-search-market-share-myths-vs... (also Jumpshot data) we can see that Google Images has been steadily decreasing in share, it might indeed have been a third in 2010-2014 but today is probably below 20%. Then there's this Quora answer from 2010, it has a 1:5.5 ratio of images to search from Alexa, i.e 15%: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-ratio-of-Google-Image-traffic-to-Google-Web-Search-traffic https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-ratio-of-Google-Image-traf... So that's two different sources of clickstream data that mostly agree, 33% is too high but 20% is plausible. The numbers are not really going to get more accurate than that unless you can hack into Google.

jobigoud 7y ago
I wonder if these numbers are for traffic as in bandwidth or for discrete requests. Counting by bandwidth would explain the surprising representation of image search.

robocat 7y ago

And if most image searched are searches for porn, then the total number of searches is perhaps not relevant. And when I am searching for an image (and I never Google for porn), I am very rarely interested in the landing pages or text that comes up.

lexicality 7y ago

It's wildly important for e-commerce. I personally will use google image search if I'm looking for a particular instance of something generic (like replacing no-name chinese electronics)