Updated: Jun 22, 2016
There are many Organic Click-Through rate (CTR) studies performed on large data sets but many of these studies are limited in their scope to the ever changing nature of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Many of these studies give you the average CTR at the time the study was performed. I was curious if the average CTR for a SERP position does change or has changed over time. What I needed for this study was historical data with clicks, impressions, and average position of queries from the Google search console. Lucky for me, we have been collecting monthly Google Search Console query data (approximately 75,000 to 150,000 queries a month collected) since late 2014. All I had to do was dive into the data for some insights.
RESULTS:
1.
The chart above shows while the CTR for average position 1 to 2 has been trending up since Q1 2014, the CTR for all other average positions were relatively flat or trending down.
Data:
Table showing Average CTR over Time.
Quarter | 1-2 | 2-4 | 4-7 | 7-10 | 11-20 | 21-300 |
Q1-2014 | .252 | .091 | .025 | .013 | .017 | .046 |
Q2-2014 | .281 | .127 | .022 | .035 | .024 | .006 |
Q3-2014 | .181 | .062 | .019 | .028 | .018 | .005 |
Q4-2014 | .194 | .073 | .036 | .024 | .029 | .009 |
Q1-2015 | .202 | .083 | .038 | .021 | .013 | .003 |
Q2-2015 | .309 | .079 | .033 | .017 | .011 | .002 |
Q3-2015 | .260 | .058 | .031 | .015 | .009 | .002 |
Q4-2015 | .332 | .060 | .030 | .019 | .017 | .006 |
Q1-2016 | .348 | .051 | .027 | .011 | .009 | .002 |
2.
Share of Clicks by Average Position since January 2014.
This chart shows the share of clicks for average position 1 to 2 has increased from just over 40% in Q1, 2014 to approximately 70% in Q1 2016.
Clicks data:
Some factors that may have led to the increase in CTR for position (1 and 2) include;
1. The rise of mobile searches has resulted in more users clicking on the 1st or 2nd link from a search results page. In May 2015, Google’s senior vice president of search Amit Singhal said more searches were happening on mobile devices than desktop in the US.
Only 1 or 2 SERP links are displayed on a smartphone search window.
2. Google search engines are getting smarter at identifying what the user wants.
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Definitions
What is CTR?
It is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the total number of users who view a page, email or ad. The CTR of a link from Organic search would be the total number of clicks on that link in a search engine results page.
What is SERP?
The search engine results page is the page displayed by a search in response to a query by the user.