What is a good CTR in Search Console?

Updated 2026-08-04

Why a single CTR benchmark is meaningless, how click-through rate varies by position and query intent, and the right way to judge your own.

People want one number. There isn't one — and the published "average CTR by position" tables are more misleading than helpful.

Why the benchmark tables mislead

Every widely-quoted table is an average across wildly different query types on wildly different result layouts. A position-1 result on a query answered by a feature block above it behaves nothing like a position-1 result on a plain page of links. Averaging them produces a number that describes no real query.

Result layout matters more than position for CTR. A first result under three ad slots, a map pack and a rich answer gets a fraction of the clicks of a first result on a page with none of those.

Intent matters more than rank

• Navigational ("acme login") — extremely high CTR for the right result. Often 60%+.
• Transactional ("buy running shoes") — clicks spread across many merchants; moderate CTR at every position.
• Informational ("how tall is everest") — frequently answered on the results page. CTR can be near zero even at position 1, and that is not a failure.

The benchmark that works

Compare yourself to yourself. Filter to a single query, note its position and CTR, and look for queries whose CTR is well below your own average at the same position. Those are your outliers — the ones where the title and description are underselling a ranking you already have.

That comparison holds the layout and intent roughly constant, which is exactly what a cross-site table cannot do.

What actually shifts CTR

• A title that answers the query rather than naming the page.
• Specifics — numbers, years, versions — over adjectives.
• A meta description that Google keeps rather than rewrites (write it to match the query).
• Structured data that earns a richer result.
• Not being truncated: keep titles roughly under 60 characters.