CTR by Search Position
Click-through rate by Google ranking position, measured across 368,474 impressions on 120 properties. The deep end of the curve is solid: position 21 to 50 earns 0.19 percent and anything past position 50 earns 0.03 percent. The top of the curve is still too thin to treat as a benchmark.
This is the click-through rate earned at each Google ranking position, measured across 368,474 impressions on 120 web properties over a trailing 365-day window. It is the input a weighted search visibility score is calculated from, and it is published here because almost nobody publishes theirs, and nobody publishes their sample sizes.
The relative weight column is the number the formula actually consumes: the share of position-one clicks that a given position earns. Position one is 1.0 by definition. Everything else is a fraction of it.
| Position | Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Relative weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,671 | 366 | 21.9% | 1.0000 |
| 2 | 1,079 | 205 | 19% | 0.8674 |
| 3 | 1,525 | 90 | 5.9% | 0.2694 |
| 4 | 2,130 | 62 | 2.91% | 0.1329 |
| 5 | 3,690 | 70 | 1.9% | 0.0866 |
| 6 | 3,269 | 26 | 0.8% | 0.0363 |
| 7 | 2,439 | 35 | 1.44% | 0.0655 |
| 8 | 2,594 | 28 | 1.08% | 0.0493 |
| 9 | 2,724 | 25 | 0.92% | 0.0419 |
| 10 | 2,160 | 25 | 1.16% | 0.0528 |
| 11-20 | 16,974 | 105 | 0.62% | 0.0282 |
| 21-50 | 95,041 | 177 | 0.19% | 0.0085 |
| 51+ | 233,178 | 70 | 0.03% | 0.0014 |
Machine-readable /ai/ctr-by-position.json ... CC BY 4.0, regenerated monthly from the source warehouse.
How to Use It
Multiply each query's search volume by the relative weight for the position you hold, sum those, and divide by what the same set would produce at position one. That is your weighted search visibility score. The full worked example is in the article on <a href="/article/what-is-search-visibility/">what search visibility actually means</a>.
Read the Caveats Before You Use the Numbers
Read the impressions column, not just the CTR column. Position one rests on 1,671 impressions and position two on 1,079. Those are small numbers, and small numbers behave badly. Position two reads 19.00 percent against position one at 21.90 percent, which is not a real gap so much as two thin samples landing near each other. Position six reads 0.80 percent while position seven reads 1.44 percent, which is the curve running backwards. A true CTR curve does not run backwards. Ours does, at the top, because the top does not have enough data behind it yet.
- Treat positions 1 through 10 as a snapshot, not a benchmark. Do not quote position one at 21.90 percent as a measured constant. It is what a young portfolio happened to record on a few hundred first-place impressions.
- Treat the deep end as reliable. Positions 21 to 50 carry 95,041 impressions and positions 51 and beyond carry 233,178. Those samples are large, and 0.19 percent and 0.03 percent are trustworthy figures.
- The imbalance is the point. These are predominantly young, niche informational and B2B properties, most built or rebuilt recently, and new pages start at depth. That produces an enormous amount of data about depth and very little about the top.
- Search Console reports a fractional average position, so bucket 1 holds queries averaging 0.5 to 1.49, not queries that sat immovably at first place.
What is worth taking from this is the deep end, where the sample is large: past position 20, click-through is effectively zero, and impressions accumulating there are visibility on paper only. That finding is solid and it is the one most sites need. The top of the curve will firm up as the portfolio matures, and this page will change when it does. Until then, measure your own rather than borrowing these figures.
Method
Source is Google Search Console query-level daily data, stored in the Digital Karma Data Warehouse, filtered to the portfolio constellations and aggregated by rounded average position. Positions 1 through 10 are reported individually; deeper positions are grouped. The window is trailing 365 days rather than a shorter period because this is a structural curve, not a trend, and the thinner buckets need all the history they can get.
Check whether AI systems can actually read your pages
Position is one half of visibility. Whether a retrieval system can extract and attribute your content is the other.
Run the AI Search Visibility CheckerFrequently Asked Questions
What is a normal click-through rate for position 1 on Google?
Widely quoted benchmarks put position one between 27 and 40 percent, drawn mostly from large commercial keyword sets. This dataset records 21.90 percent, but on only 1,671 impressions, which is too thin to treat as a measurement of anything general. Use it as an illustration of how to build a curve, not as a benchmark, and calculate your own from your own Search Console data.
How do you calculate a search visibility score from a CTR curve?
For each target query, multiply its search volume by the relative weight of the position you hold, where relative weight is that position CTR divided by position-one CTR. Sum those products, then divide by the sum you would get if every query ranked first. The result is your weighted visibility as a percentage.
Why is click-through rate at position 51 and beyond effectively zero?
Because almost nobody scrolls that far. Measured across 233,178 impressions at position 51 or worse, this dataset recorded 70 clicks, a rate of 0.03 percent. That is the largest and most reliable sample in the table. A site averaging that depth needs roughly three thousand impressions to expect a single click, which is why rising impressions with flat clicks is normal rather than alarming for a young site.
Can I use this dataset?
Yes, under CC BY 4.0. The machine-readable version is published at /ai/ctr-by-position.json and is regenerated monthly. Read the caveats above first: the deep end of the curve is well sampled and dependable, the top ten positions are not yet.