The volume of digital content is exploding. And there are only so many hours that users have to spend online. It’s a simple equation, and the inevitable result is that users are getting more choosy, which means attracting their attention is getting harder.
Whenever I write an advice piece for Runcible, I always ask the same question: what do the numbers say?
I’m looking for an idea of average performance as a basic benchmark to help comms teams see how they’re doing. Without this, it’s impossible to know whether they’re doing better or worse than expected. And I’m always struck by how hard it is to find such basic answers.
But given that measurement is a big part of everything I do, I’ve decided to collect the most interesting answers in one place. That’s partly for my own benefit. But I hope it will be useful for others.
Given the sheer volume of digital media activity, there is curiously little data on what’s effective. Most sources I use are digital service providers but there’s a smattering of academic research and some comes from the digital platforms. They are the best answers I can find on that particular topic. But if I’ve missed better ones, please share them in the comments.
What’s the hard data on Search activity?
What proportion of traffic does the average site get from Search?
63% of traffic to the top US sites comes from Google.
What proportion of posts get search traffic?
Just 3.45%, according to Ahrefs.
What proportion of users go beyond results 1-10?
0.44%, according to Backlinko
What’s the impact of AI on Search?
Measuring this appears to be difficult:
- SparkToro found that only 36% of searches in 2024 generated clicks to the open Web.
- Authoritas estimates that Google shows an AI overview on more than 90% of searches.
- Semrush says the appearance of overviews in search results doubled between January and March 2025 but only to 13%.
- Seer Interactive research shows click-through rates fell by 70% when Google displays an AI overview.
- Orbit Media polling suggests half of Americans expect AI to eventually replace search engines.
What proportion of sites pass Google’s Core Web Vitals tests?
In November 2023, Google said that more than 40% of sites passed all CWV tests, which means that the majority did not.
What is a good average CTR for Google search?
What are the most common types of search?
80% are ‘informational’, 10% ‘transactional’, and 10% ‘navigational’, according to a Pennsylvania State University study (2007)
What percentage of searches are image searches? 20%
What percentage of searches are voice searches? 20.5%, according to ecommerce specialist Yaguara
A reality check on Website usage
What impact does site speed have on users?
53% of users are likely to abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, according to Google. Bounce rates for pages depend critically on load time; at 2 seconds it’s 9% and at 5 seconds it’s 38%, according to Pingdom. That echoes results from the BBC, which found that every 1 second increase in load time lost them 10% of their audience.
What is the average duration of a website visit?
Databox estimates B2B sites’ at 77.61 seconds. Another study suggests a benchmark of 49 seconds for all sites. The average of Runcible clients is 45s.
What percentage of people scan web pages? 84%, according to Nielsen
How long to scan a page? A 2010 University of Missouri study of responses to homepage designs suggested it takes less than 0.2 seconds for someone to assess a website.
How much of your articles will be read on average? As little as 20%, according to Nielsen (very old study)
How long are the best performing articles on Search? It depends. Short answers to straight questions work. But longer posts tend to do better with articles reaching Google’s top spots averaging 1500 words.
Social Media
What percentage of an Instagram/Facebook account’s followers will get to seen an individual post? 7.6/5.9%, according to Social Insider
Engagement rates for Social: Hootsuite breaks this down by industry
Time spent scanning posts. Facebook tells advertisers that users only give them 2.5 seconds before they move on to the next social post in their feeds. On mobile, it is just 1.7 seconds.
What does good newsletter performance look like?
What are good Open and Clickthrough Rates?
Campaign Monitor averages and breakdown for industries in 2022
What is the optimal length for an email subject line?
Given how little text shows in typical inbox layouts, you’ve got very little space to work with:
- Politemail recommends a maximum of 7 words and 42 characters.
- Axios says you can expect a 3-5% point rise if you stick to the range of 31-49 characters.
- Orbit Media says max should be 9 words.
Storytelling
- Numerous academic studies have demonstrated the supremacy of storytelling. One of the most striking is from Chip Heath, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University and author of `Making it Stick’. He asked students to make a one-minute speech on non-violent crime. 90% chose to focus on data and just 10% told stories. Heath surveyed the students on what they could remember: 63% could remember the stories, only 5% could remember any of the statistics.
- A simple A/B test by the customer support firm Groove showed similarly outsized results for storytelling. A blog post was created in two forms – as a pure informational post and as a post that began with a story. The post that starts with a story saw average reading time 400% higher than the purely informational post. Doubters of the storytelling approach might want to replicate this experiment.