Organic CTR benchmarks by position

The two largest current studies bracket the honest answer. Backlinko's study with Semrush, built from about 12 million queries of Search Console data and last refreshed in 2025, puts the first organic result at 27.6 percent of impressions. Advanced Web Ranking, which tracks around 1.75 million US search results pages monthly and publishes its numbers with each refresh, put desktop position 1 at about 20 percent of impressions in mid-2026. Both disclose sample and method, and they still sit eight points apart.

The gap isn't sloppiness. One dataset leans on the sites and queries that connect their Search Console accounts, the other on a tracked panel of SERPs weighted by impressions, and they sample different mixes of branded queries, SERP layouts and intents. Which is the point of this whole post: a CTR benchmark without its method attached is a rumor with decimals.

The curve matters more than the peak, and on the curve the studies agree. Clicks collapse fast: position 2 earns roughly a third to a half of what position 1 earns, position 3 roughly a third of position 2 in the tracked-SERP data, and by the bottom of page one the rates are in the low single digits. In the Backlinko data the top three results together take 54 percent of all clicks.

Page two barely exists. The same study finds 0.63 percent of searchers click anything on it. Moving from position 11 to position 8 is invisible in most traffic charts, while moving from 4 to 2 is not - which is why a list of pages stuck just off the first page is worth more than most keyword ideas.

Every disclosed study finds the same direction and a different size. Pew Research ran a controlled study of 900 US users in March 2025: on searches showing an AI Overview, 8 percent of visits ended in a click on an organic link, against 15 percent without one. Ahrefs compared 300,000 informational keywords across two Decembers and measured position 1's CTR 58 percent lower when an AI Overview is present. Seer Interactive's Search Console panel found informational organic CTR at 0.84 percent with an Overview against 2.94 without, and Amsive, the most conservative of the group at 700,000 keywords, measured about a 15 percent decline overall - with branded queries actually gaining.

The spread comes from what each study sampled and when, because the feature itself keeps moving: Semrush's tracking had AI Overviews on about 6 percent of keywords in January 2025, roughly a quarter at the summer peak, and around 16 percent by November. The practical reading is simpler than the numbers: any CTR benchmark measured before 2025 describes a results page that no longer exists for informational queries.

In the Backlinko data, position 1 on a branded query earns 35 to 47 percent of impressions, while position 1 on a non-branded query earns about 19. Nearly all navigational intent resolves in one click on the top result, and that pulls every blended average upward.

This is the first thing to correct for when comparing yourself against a table. A site whose query mix is heavy with its own name will beat the benchmarks everywhere it ranks first, and conclude its titles are excellent. Split branded from non-branded before believing either number.

The cleanest evidence on layout is Sistrix's 2020 study of over 80 million keywords of mobile Search Console data, which isolated single-feature results pages. Position 1 on a pure organic page earned 34 percent of impressions. With sitelinks under it, 47. With shopping ads above it, under 14. Same position, threefold difference, decided entirely by what else Google put on the page.

The study predates AI Overviews, so its absolute numbers are dated, but its lesson has only gotten stronger: the layout of the results page sets your ceiling, and rank decides where under that ceiling you sit. When CTR shifts and rank hasn't, the page around you changed.

The figure most tables still quote for position 1 comes from Backlinko's 2019 study. That study was real and disclosed - the problem is purely age: the same team's refreshed data now says 27.6, and the 2019 figure predates AI Overviews and several SERP layouts. Quoting it in 2026 overstates the value of a first-place ranking on the modern page.

The genuinely untraceable tables are older still: the mobile-versus-desktop CTR breakdowns that trace back to Chitika and Optify, ad-network research from the early 2010s whose original methodology can no longer be retrieved. Numbers that can't be checked don't become true through repetition.

Search Console's average position is impression-weighted across every query a page appears for, so a page can hold position 3 on the query that matters while its reported average sits at 12 because it also flickers into hundreds of marginal results. Comparing that blended figure against a per-position benchmark is a category error. If you want a real comparison, filter one page to one query in Search Console's own report, and compare that pair's CTR to the table for its position.

The other mismatch is intent mix. The benchmarks average across everything from navigation to research, but a site skews - a documentation site lives on long informational queries, a store on commercial ones - and each mix has its own honest curve. Your most useful benchmark is your own history: this page, this query, this position, last quarter.

A falling CTR next to rising impressions usually isn't decay - it's mix. New queries entering at position 30 add impressions that almost never click, dragging the average down while nothing about the old queries changed. Check whether the established page-one queries lost CTR at stable position before concluding anything.

If they did, the suspects are on the results page: an AI Overview or featured snippet arrived, an ad block appeared, or Google rewrote your title. That last one is more common than assumed - Zyppy's 2022 study of 81,000 URLs found Google rewrote about 62 percent of titles, and rewrites get likelier the further a title sits from 50-60 characters. Search for your own top queries and look at what's actually being shown, because the title you A/B tested may not be the title anyone sees.

Treat 20 to 28 percent of impressions as the current disclosed range for a non-Overview position 1, expect roughly half of that on informational queries where an AI Overview sits above you, and expect double it on your own brand name. Compare per-query, not blended, split branded from generic, and when your CTR moves at a stable rank, go look at the results page before you touch the page. The tables are a starting prior - your own search data is the benchmark that pays.