Search engines made up a smaller share of publisher pageviews in most regions than a year earlier. A lower share alone doesn't show search sent fewer pageviews.

Search engines accounted for 12% of all page views at North American publishers in Chartbeat’s network, based on the data found within the analytics firm’s Q3’26 Audience Report, which was released October 15th, 2026, whereas they represented 21% of page views as reported in the firm’s Q3’25 report.

The two reports contain search engine page view share by region. There are ten total regions included in each report. Nine of these regions have experienced a decrease in the proportion of their total page views generated through a search engine versus last year. Only one of the ten has seen an increase in this number, that being Africa.

Central Asia’s search share decreased by the most, as it dropped from 53 percent down to 33 percent. North America’s share dropped by nine percentage points, as did that of the Middle East. Meanwhile, Africa’s search share increased from 41 percent to 46 percent.

Of those nine points lost for North America, five were lost between the third and fourth quarters of 2025. In fact, North American search share was 16% in Chartbeat’s Q4 2025 report, then 13% for Q2 2026 and 12% for Q3 on the latest chart.

Search’s share of total page views for each region is shown as a bar in the reports’ charts. Search share (or search’s percentage) may go down because search sent fewer page views during that time frame than it had before, because another source or sources sent more page views, or both.

Source link