Are You Getting the Traffic You Deserve from Google?

It’s no secret that Google works hard to keep its users on its platform. And why wouldn’t they? The more time users spend on Google, the more likely they are to take actions that make the company money.

In line with this, we are seeing a steady increase in the number of pages users view on Google each time they visit the site. On average, users are now clicking on 10 separate resources within Google before leaving to visit another site.

To put that in context, the average pages per visit for most of our client sites ranges between 3 to 5. This means that, on average, Google is doing a 100-200% better job of keeping users engaged on its site than our clients are.

It also means that it’s harder than ever to get a Google user to visit your website. Which means it is time to be more strategic about earning traffic from the top places users do their browsing and searching, so that your website remains a valuable marketing tool.

Google vs AI Chatbots

Interestingly, user behavior on AI chatbots is much different. For instance, ChatGPT users are 2.3 times more likely to visit external websites than Google users. We think that this largely can be attributed to AI chatbots having fewer resources such as maps, business listings, and other wildly popular tools that get plenty of interaction in Google.

Though AI chatbot use isn’t yet anywhere near the size of Google, many of these platforms are growing fast and represent an opportunity for you to grab more website traffic than you would otherwise get if Google was the only game in town.

How You Can Earn More Traffic

If we are in an era of flat or even declining website growth as Google, social media, and AI-powered platforms all continue to eat up a huge share of time spent online, how do you maintain your website as a profitable driver of new business? Here are a few tips.

1. Ensure your story and your key information is consistent across Google. This of course starts with your Google Business profile. Having a complete and accurate profile is essential, and we highly recommend regular posting of specials and other news since this is often the first place Google users will encounter your brand. Wherever possible, link out to your website and “tease” key information so you earn the click.
2. Consider ChatGPT and other AI platforms as additional traffic sources since they refer more visitors per user. We are beginning to see AI-based browsers start to refer a measurable amount of traffic to client sites. It is worth doing some homework to discover what’s being said about your practice in ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepSeek and work toward optimizing your mentions in these chatbots.
3. Load your website with content users can’t get elsewhere. In the cosmetic surgery context, a great example of this is a before and after photo gallery. Sure, some of these images can be put on social and may show up in Google image search, but nudity restrictions often prevent the vast majority of a surgeon’s best work from being displayed anywhere except on their own website. Another excellent website resource can be a treatment planner.

The web marketing game is shifting, just as it has so many times over the 18+ years we’ve been doing this work. We predict that the practices with a wealth of content that users most want to see, and who place that content strategically to encourage lead conversion, will be in the best shape to weather the coming changes in web search.