Found a stat about dialogue tags that wrecked my head

I was reading through some old writing craft blogs and found out that over 90% of published dialogue uses 'said' as the tag, not fancy alternatives like 'exclaimed' or 'murmured'. That surprised me because my critique group keeps telling me to vary my tags up, but the data says readers basically skip over 'said' anyway. Has anyone else tried switching to mostly bare 'said' tags after seeing something like this, and did it actually make your scenes read better or just feel flat?

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sandra6931mo ago

I heard Stephen King say the same thing, and he's sold a few books.

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