• showing an “Average position” column right on the main Search Queries page
• showing a “Displaying” number for Impressions and Clicks
• showing a CTR for a given query

These items can provide some great insight into your site’s activity. Of course you should cross reference with your own analytics to see if the data resembles what you are actually seeing. Especially in terms of organic click-through rates. We should remind you that the traditional definition of click-through rate is the average number of click-throughs per hundred ad impressions, expressed as a percentage. The organic click-through rate that Google is reporting in Google Webmaster Tools is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions, expressed as a percentage.

According to Wikipedia:

CTR is most commonly defined as “number of clicks” divided by “number of impressions” and generally not in terms of the “number of persons” who clicked divided by the “number of impressions”

Organic Click -Through Rates: What’s the Standard?

What is interesting about this is that in the past, people have tried to establish a standard for organic click-through rates, yet this has not been an easy thing to do. I would suggest that there really is no true standard for organic click-through rates due to a couple of key factors:

• Nature of the search – different types of searches will provide different type of CTRs
• Changing Landscape of the SERPs – as personalization and blended search make the Search Engine Results Pages more dynamic, calculating the organic click-through rate becomes more difficult.
• Real-Time Search – timely search results contribute to the changing landscape of search results page

So as you can see having a standard for organic click-through rates is truly difficult to produce. Having said that we are getting closer. Here’s a comparison of some recent research and information on organic click-through rates that you might want to consider.

Chitka Research @Chitka – May 2010

There were some interesting findings with this research. While stating the obvious, that the prime organic real estate in Google is the #1 spot, the CTR of 34.35% that they reported was higher than we have typically seen. Here is a breakdown of the organic click-through rates (in Google) for positions 1-15 based on Chitka’s research.




Another interesting finding from their research was the importance of being on the first page of Google.  The research suggests that moving from the top of page o in Google (position 11) to the bottom of page one (position 10) sees a 143% jump in traffic.  This is significant although the 143% increase means going from a CTR of 1.11% to 2.71%.  The point is clear however, you want to be on page one of Google results to generate sufficient click throughs and organic traffic.  In particular within the top three organic results ideally in the top spot.  Does this task daunting?  Well it obviously depends on the keyword your are trying to place for, but optimizing your content, and not just your traditional web pages (read: video, press releases, shopping feeds, local results, blogs etc.)can help you gain visiblity in the organic search results.  http://chitika.com/research/2010/the-value-of-google-result-positioning/

Enquiro’s Marketing to a B2B Technical Buyer – 2007

In our very own research we established our own organic click-through rates based on how B2B technical buyers search knowing that technical buyers are using online to search and select and screen out vendors; to create short lists; and to get competitive pricing for closing negotiations.  What we found is that the top organic listing generated a CTR of nearly 25%.  What we found that was interesting and holds true based on some of our own client’s data is that being in position ten at the bottom of the page was more valuable than say being in positions five thru nine.  Here is a breakdown of our organic click-through rates:



If you like, you can download our free B2B whitepaper on Marketing to a B2B Technical Buyer from Enquiro Whitepapers page.  We have been analyzing organic click-through rates for years dating back to some of our earlier research in 2005 as mentioned here.  It’s interesting that even in 2010, that organic listings/results still generate the majority of clicks compared to paid or sponsored listings.  While the gap is narrowing ever so slightly (a few years ago the split was 80/20 paid vs, organic), today 70-75% of the clicks are for organic listings when compared to sponsored.  Where are you putting your resources?

We have conducted additional research which suggests that the CTR is most likely around 26% for top organic, 12.68% for position two and 8.89% for third organic spot.  Results vary but this seems to be close to what we are seeing in Google.  With all of the recent changes that Google has been implementing it appears that the organic CTRs are changing as well.  Take this post which suggest that the average organic click-through rate s 46.37% and spot number two is 29.3%.  Still other reports such as this one, suggest that the CTR for the top organic spot in Google is 42.3% and the second spot is 11.92%.

So while there is no standard for organic click-through rates, the data is there and organic click-through rates are not as elusive as they once were.  Of course you have to monitor your own data to see if the CTRs mentioned above hold true for what you are seeing with your own traffic and such.  Your organic search efforts should focus on gaining visibility in the search results.  It is obvious that there is no greater visibility than being in the prime real estate of the top organic listing in the search results, whether it’s Google, Yahoo, or Bing.


© 2010 Enquiro Search Solutions.