Paid search marketing firm
The Search Agency released its Q3 “State of Paid Search Report” for the US market. The report is based on a large volume of client data and discusses paid search trends by search engine and several industry segments. The headline is that a third of Google’s paid search clicks in the US are now coming from smartphones and tablets.
The following are some of top-level data released in the report:
- Google average CPC was up across all 3 device types, with the largest growth occurring in tablets, which grew 14.2% YoY.
- Google’s distribution of clicks continued to shift away from desktops toward smartphones and tablets, which now make up more than 1/3 of the search engine’s clicks in Q3.
- While clicks on desktops were flat YoY, search clicks on tablets increased 63.4% and clicks on smartphones more than doubled.
The following charts show the percentage of paid-search clicks by device category.

In the aggregate, Google saw 33% of paid clicks in Q3 coming from smartphones and tablets, with the greatest growth coming from tablets. Bing saw about 18% from mobile devices, since it has a much smaller and less visible mobile presence.