57% of Search Traffic is Now Mobile, According to Recent Study

According to a new report from BrightEdge, 57% of search traffic is now coming from smartphones and tablets.

BrightEdge also discovered ranking positions for a vast majority of keywords were different depending on whether the search was conducted on mobile versus desktop.

Research indicates 79% of all keywords rank different on desktop compared to mobile, with 47% of those being keywords in positions 1-20.

Site owners may also be missing opportunities when it comes to the visibility of their most important pages.

A webpage of a particular website most likely to show up first in search results will be different 35% of the time, BrightEdge found.

”If brands do not track and optimize for both device channels, they are likely to misunderstand the opportunities and threats affecting them

It is recommended that marketers assess the proportion of their traffic coming from mobile and desktop and adjust their strategy accordingly.

In addition to having a fast, mobile-optimized site, this also includes understanding the user intent signals of desktop visitors and mobile visitors.

”Where you find divergent organic rank or content or clickthrough rate, optimize the stronger device proportionally to its traffic contribution share. In other words, understand which device is more important and optimize it first, and best, and the other second.”