Ecommerce SEO: The Search Data Everyone's Reading Wrong Right Now (Q3 2026)

Vídeo em Inglês, publicado pelo canal Stryde.

About this content: The summary, key points and topics below are generated automatically from the video transcript. They reflect the content, opinions, claims and predictions presented in the video and do not represent a position, validation or fact-check by All The Gate.

Video summary

This video analyzes Semrush and Rand Fishkin's Q3 2026 data report on search engine trends, examining the impact of AI search, organic click-through rates, the growth of long-tail search queries, and top-of-funnel consumer research behavior to help e-commerce brands allocate their marketing budgets effectively.

Key points

• AI tools continue to grow in desktop web activity, but traditional search engines remain significantly larger, with search estimated to be seven to eight times larger than all AI tools combined.
• Organic click-through rates on Google rebounded to an all-time high of 46.11% in September after hitting a low earlier in the summer.
• Google's share of searches sending traffic to the open web dropped below 40%, emphasizing the risk of relying entirely on Google traffic and the importance of owned channels like email and SMS.
• Long-tail search queries of 15 words or more have increased as users type and speak to search engines conversationally, requiring e-commerce content to answer specific, detailed questions.
• Less than 1% of Google searches come from users ready to buy immediately, whereas roughly 18% come from users in the research phase, making top-of-funnel content and buying guides crucial.

Topics

SEOAI searchGoogle searchE-commerce marketingClick-through ratesSearch queriesContent marketingTraffic acquisition

Video transcript

Transcript from available captions; it may contain errors.

Every single quarter, Semrush and SEO pioneer Rand Fishkin drops a massive report on the state of search. And every quarter, the same two camps show up every single time. Camp one says that Google is dying and that AI is taking over. Invest all of your time in optimizing for ChatGPT. Camp two says absolutely nothing has changed and SEO is fine. Okay? You can see all of the arguments on LinkedIn. I see them every single day. Truth is, they're both wrong. Okay? And if you're making decisions for your e-commerce brand based on either take, okay? Either it's dying or it's not, you're going to misallocate your budget heading into the most important quarter of the year. So here is what the Q3 2026 data actually says. So let's start with the one that everyone wants to talk about. That is AI. I mean, why not? It's fun, it's exciting, it's powerful. Let's talk about it. Okay? AI tools, they hit 1.29% of US desktop web web activity in September. That is up 79% from the same period of time a year ago. So it's up quite a bit. Sounds massive, right? Here's the context that nobody actually includes. Traditional search, okay? That is going to Google that is typing in a search query. It is sitting at roughly 10% of all desktop activity. That means that search engines are still seven to eight times larger than all AI tools combined. And that's not Google alone, all search engines versus all tools, seven to eight X, right? That's humongous. That is something you can't ignore. Chat GPT reached about 39% of US desktop users. Okay, that's real. That is a real number. But Rand, the guy who's been tracking this closer than anyone else, estimates it'll be three to five years before AI usage even matches what is happening in search right now, okay? Not replaces, not decimates, not gets rid of, right? Matches. And that's important. So no, AI search is not replacing search next quarter. It's not even replacing it next year. But yes, it's growing fast enough that you need to be visible there, that you need to have brand awareness there, okay? So the move, which I am hearing a lot of brands making, is cutting back on search and investing that money in AI. That is not the move. Do not cut your search budget and redirect it to AI optimization, okay? The move is to take what you've been doing from an SEO perspective, or maybe you haven't been doing SEO at all and you're wanting to start to get involved in it, right? You want to use that as the foundation and then add the AI visibility on top of a search program that is actually working. All right? Now here's the data point that should change how you think about the rest of this year and going in to 2027. In July, organic click-through rates on Google hit their lowest point in the entire data set. That spooked me. It spooked a lot of our clients, spooked a lot of our prospects. Only 39.74% of desktop searches ended in a click to an organic result, also spooked us, right? By September, that number had jumped from 39.74% to 46.11% and that was an all-time new high. At the same time, zero click searches, if you don't know what that is, go do a search, zero click searches dropped to their lowest level since since March. Okay, that is whew, right? That is amazing news. Google's own property clicks, that is clicks to maps, shopping, hotels, etc happening right inside the SERP, fell from nearly 18% to just over 14%. So they are not hanging onto those clicks as much as they were in Q2. So organic clicks actually bounce back hard, but here's the part that should actually keep you up at night and give you a little bit of heartburn. Google's share of searches that sent any traffic to the open web dropped below 40% over the summer. And the users didn't leave, right? They're still using the platform. We've talked about the data. They stayed on Google. They are continuing to use Google, which means that Google can actually tighten the faucet on your traffic whenever they want and your customers won't even notice. And that again should give you a little bit of heartburn. That's that's scary. It's kind of a scary place to be, okay? And that's why we preach here at Stride is that you can't build your entire business on Google traffic. And when I say Google traffic, that's organic, that's paid, any of that, right? You can't build the business on that because Google can take that traffic away tomorrow. They can start to decrease it tomorrow even though users and use like they're they're using it more, right? You need to have email lists. You need to have an SMS list. You need to have a community, repeat customers that come back and and buy from you without ever needing to go to Google to search, okay? Because the platform that sends you traffic today can quietly send you less tomorrow and then less the next day and less the next day. It's a really sucky place to be, right? So this next one that I wanted to touch on has immediate tactical implications. So lean into this one. Searches over 15 words, 15 words long, hit 2.58% in September. The previous high was 1.82% in May. 9 to 14 words searches also hit new records. Meanwhile, five word searches hit a new low. Okay? So people are using Google and they're searching the way that they talk now. They're not typing in accent chair anymore. They're typing in the best accent chair under $500 for a small living room and in the color green. Okay? I know this to be true. I use Google like this now. I've seen my wife use Google like this now. I even see my kids using Google like this now. They are pulling up Google. They are they are even hitting the the voice button and they're talking it to Google. Okay? That's how we use AI and that's how people are starting to use Google. What does this mean for you right now? Your product pages and your collection pages need to answer specific detailed questions, not just shop accent chairs, but the best accent chairs for small spaces, and accent chairs under $500 that ship for free. Those are just like a couple of examples. Make sure that you're adding frequently asked questions, add comparison content, add use case sections. I've talked about this in a number of videos because this content doesn't just help your e-commerce SEO, it feeds the AI overviews and it feeds ChatGPT the other LLMs answers too. They are craving that information so that they can start to put that in their search results, okay? And if you're running Google Ads, watch your search terms more carefully, especially if you're running partial match or broad match, okay? Broad match and AI match or max, AI max, which is new, will trigger your ads on these longer tail queries. Some of them will convert. Most of them will probably just burn your budget. So you need to make sure you're watching that weekly, not monthly, and that you are adding more negative keywords to your negative keyword list more frequently. Okay? That is incredibly important or you're going to burn budget really fast. One more number that should reshape your content marketing strategy, which fuels your SEO and fuels your AI search, less than one in 100 Google searches come from someone who's ready to buy. I've been talking about this for a long time on our blog. 0.81% Okay? That is it, but nearly one in five, which is 18% comes from someone researching a product or a service, okay? Less than 1% people ready to buy. 18% people who are researching a product or a service. So that even, you know, is an important statistic for for SaaS companies, for service-based companies, right? The bottom of the funnel is tiny and it is an expensive sliver of demand, okay? So if you're optimizing for two to three word queries, that's bottom of the funnel. People who are ready to buy right now, super tiny. We got to go higher funnel. The research stage is 20 times bigger. So if all of your content is product pages, if it's category pages, you're only showing up for that less than 1% right now. The brands who are winning, the brands are crushing it right now have comparison pages, they have buying guides, they have best for content, and they have answers to every question a shopper asks before they're ready to purchase. Now, that's probably an exaggeration. Every question, we can't predict every question, but they are building so much helpful helpful content, resource based content on their blog and on their their comparison pages. They win the research phase. And when they win the research phase, those people go further down the funnel and the purchase follows. So we've got to move higher in the funnel. We've got to capture them up here. We've got to build trust. We've got to coach them. We've got to hold their hand. We've got to lock arms with them and help coach them through the process to make a purchase on your site. Absolutely critical as we go into 2027, okay? This is a lot, right? This is a lot to take in, especially if you've been doing SEO for your business for a long time. We're going to need to make some pivots or if you're new to SEO, right? You may have to adjust your strategy. If you want help figuring out what that looks like, what this data means exactly for your brand specifically, shoot me a DM or I'll also put a link in the bio with a link to our website where you can request a free marketing plan and a free marketing strategy where we'll go through, we'll walk you through this, we'll hand hold you through this and help you see what the journey looks like to help you accomplish the end goal. All right? So shoot me that DM, click on the link in the bio and let's chat.

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Assuntos: E-commerce, Marketing e SEO, IA e tendências. Publicado no YouTube em 2026-11-05.

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