We pulled anonymized Google Search Console data from over 400,000 websites and measured the actual organic CTR for each.
In short: for an entire website, a good organic CTR is usually somewhere in between 1% and 2%. However, this number varies greatly by industry, agency and website size.
Below, we break down median organic CTR by industry, by domain rating (DR), and by site size—and then look at why CTR is falling across the board thanks to AI overviews and AI search.
methodology
This article is updated every month by Agent A with new data.
- This is data from real websites. These benchmarks are based on anonymized, aggregated Google Search Console data from 422,421 real websites. We take each website’s actual clicks and impressions directly from GSC, aggregate them, and report numbers for the last full month.
- This is the CTR for the entire site, not the CTR for position 1. For each website, we divide the total number of clicks by the total number of impressions for the month. That’s why these numbers (low single digits) are well below the “Position 1 ≈ 30-40%” numbers you see elsewhere, and (unfortunately) they match the CTR in your own Search Console overview.
- We report the median, not the average. Some large websites (e.g. Wikipedia or Amazon) increase the averages and flatter the typical websites. The median – the location in the middle of each group – is the better measure. (For contrast, we show the mean next to it.)
Here is the median organic CTR for all 26 industry categories, ranked highest to lowest, for May 2026.
| industry | Medium CTR | Medium CTR | Websites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult | 7.53% | 11.66% | 182 |
| Online communities | 3.51% | 6.28% | 21 |
| Arts and entertainment | 2.25% | 4.26% | 557 |
| games | 2.03% | 4.77% | 684 |
| reference | 1.99% | 6.54% | 18 |
| Internet and telecommunications | 1.88% | 4.36% | 397 |
| News | 1.63% | 2.62% | 515 |
| Computers and Electronics | 1.60% | 3.74% | 535 |
| Cars and vehicles | 1.58% | 2.51% | 808 |
| sport | 1.56% | 2.92% | 717 |
| People & Society | 1.53% | 3.22% | 293 |
| Finance | 1.50% | 2.60% | 1,236 |
| Food & Drink | 1.45% | 2.99% | 717 |
| Property | 1.44% | 2.30% | 313 |
| Books & Literature | 1.37% | 2.91% | 86 |
| Science | 1.36% | 2.98% | 142 |
| Shopping | 1.36% | 2.50% | 2,363 |
| Travel and transportation | 1.25% | 2.40% | 1,314 |
| Hobbies & Leisure | 1.23% | 1.94% | 28 |
| Jobs & Education | 1.17% | 2.07% | 1,356 |
| Health | 1.12% | 2.02% | 1,730 |
| Beauty and fitness | 0.96% | 1.88% | 201 |
| Home & Garden | 0.91% | 1.65% | 1,419 |
| Law and Government | 0.90% | 1.73% | 276 |
| Economy and industry | 0.85% | 1.74% | 865 |
| Pets and animals | 0.80% | 1.36% | 266 |
A few things stand out, and most of them have to do with one thing: how often Google answers the query for you.
- Adult websites are in a league of their ownat 7.53%, more than double the next category. One reason for this is that these SERPs – ironically – remain very clean. Our research into what triggers AI synopsis found that only 4% of NSFW queries return an AI synopsis, so there is rarely an AI response (or other SERP feature) to intercept the click.
- The “answer-heavy” categories are at the bottomand they are the same categories that trigger most AI overviews. Pets and animals (here 0.80% CTR) trigger an AIO in 36.8% of search queries; health (1.12%) to 43.0%; Science (1.36%) to 43.6%. When Google answers the question on the page, fewer people click through.
- Information and question requests are the most exposed. AI overviews appear in 57.9% of all question queries and 99.9% of AIOs display informational intent. So the more focused your niche is on “how/what/why” searches, the more likely there is an AIO between your result and the click.
- Most industries are between 1% and 2%. If you are a typical content or commerce site, this area is your realistic benchmark.
Recognition drives clicks, and the stronger your site is (measured here by domain rating), the more likely searchers are to click on your result rather than a competitor’s.
Across 422,421 websites, the median CTR increases steadily as DR increases, from 0.43% at the bottom to 2.56% at the top – roughly a 6x difference. And the increase is remarkably consistent: every single DR level invariably has a higher mean CTR than the one below it – a clean, almost linear increase across the entire scale.
| Domain valuation | Medium CTR | Medium CTR | Websites |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-10 | 0.43% | 1.99% | 217,565 |
| 10-20 | 0.56% | 1.72% | 59,960 |
| 20-30 | 0.65% | 1.70% | 51,139 |
| 30-40 | 0.71% | 1.72% | 38,447 |
| 40-50 | 0.77% | 1.68% | 21,499 |
| 50-60 | 0.82% | 1.74% | 15,575 |
| 60-70 | 0.94% | 1.81% | 8,344 |
| 70-80 | 1.21% | 2.52% | 7,858 |
| 80-90 | 2.16% | 4.75% | 1,614 |
| 90-100 | 2.56% | 7.03% | 420 |
To be clear about cause and effect: Looking for more backlinks to increase your DR won’t get people to click. DR does not appear in the SERP and no one clicks on a result due to the number of referring domains. What’s likely happening is that the same brands that are recognizable enough to drive high DR are also the brands that searchers recognize and trust in the results – so they get the click. DR is a representative of this knowledge, not its cause.
The bottom line for newer websites: a CTR under 1% is not a failure, it is the norm if you are below DR 40. CTR improves as you build authority, but it’s a slow climb, not a switch you can flip.
Larger sites also tend to achieve higher CTR – partly because size correlates with authority, and partly because large sites rank for more branded and navigational searches (where people specifically search for them).
| Indexed pages | Medium CTR | Medium CTR | Websites |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-10 | 0.61% | 2.21% | 135,931 |
| 10-50 | 0.57% | 1.31% | 98,839 |
| 50-100 | 0.59% | 1.18% | 29,701 |
| 100-200 | 0.69% | 1.20% | 21,192 |
| 200-500 | 0.73% | 1.30% | 17,968 |
| 500-1,000 | 0.81% | 1.40% | 8,217 |
| 1,000-5,000 | 1.00% | 1.66% | 8,910 |
| 5,000+ | 1.68% | 2.75% | 3,764 |
Organic CTRs drop for one main reason: Google has a clear incentive to keep people on Google instead of sending them to your website.
Our research shows that this is what happens:
- Thanks to SERP features, the click-through rate was already falling before AI. Featured snippets, “People Also Ask” boxes, knowledge panels and local packages have been answering questions directly on the results page for years. Each of them gives a searcher a reason not to click. AI overviews didn’t start this trend – they accelerated a long-standing decline.
- AI overviews suppress clicks by ~58%. Our updated research found that in the presence of an AI overview, clicks on the top organic result decrease by about a multiple 58% compared to the same query without one. This is a significant increase from the approximately 34.5% decline we measured in our previous study. The effect gets worse, not better, as AI overviews mature.
- The most affected searches are precisely those that already had a low CTR. AI overviews lean heavily toward information and question searches (57.9% of question queries trigger a search). So the answer-heavy industries at the bottom of our table are no longer just losing clicks to a clean SERP function, they are losing them to a full AI answer.
- Clean SERPs still pay off. When no AI overview is shown, the organic click-through rate has actually held steady or increased because there is less competition for clicks on those results. The sites that suffer from this are the ones whose queries get an AI response on top.
What this means for your benchmark
Don’t compare yourself to a first position ideal. Compare with yours Industry median (the tables above) and observe the relationship between impressions and clicks. If impressions remain stable but CTR drops, an AI overview is likely intercepting your request.
To confirm, go to Organic positions report Site Explorer and filter by keywords that display a AI overview:
If you’re below the median in your industry, here are the levers that can actually help you improve your CTR:
- Rewrite title tags to match intent. Your title is the biggest CTR lever. Preload the value, tailor it to the intent of the query, and make it more compelling than the results around you.
- Write meta descriptions that generate a click. Google often rewrites them, but a meaningful description can still get clicks when used.
- Win SERP features. Featured snippets, sitelinks and rich results take up more space and attract more attention. If you don’t own it, a competitor does.
- Add relevant structured data. Star ratings, FAQs, and other schema markups can visually highlight your results.
- AI overviews cannot exploit target queries. Commercial and navigation queries are far less likely to trigger an AIO than informational queries – and they convert better anyway.
An honest caveat: Even if you meet all of these points, you can’t guarantee a big increase in clicks. This is the nature of SEO today.
Google is increasingly sucking up clicks and keeping users on its own websites. Therefore, the organic CTR cap is lower than it used to be and is largely out of your control.
These levers will help you win the clicks that are still up for grabs, but the bigger opportunity now is to influence sales in other ways: getting quoted in AI answers, increasing brand awareness so people seek you out, and getting the buying visitors who click.
Optimize CTR, but don’t just measure success by clicks.
So what is a good organic CTR? For an entire website, 1-2% is the honest, typical guideline– but the real answer is: “Better than the median in your industry and rising.” Use the tables above to find your realistic target by niche, authority and size, then focus on the levers that move the needle.
And remember: As AI overviews and response engines redesign the SERP, click-through rate alone is becoming less and less of a comprehensive measure of SEO success. The websites that win here still get clicks, but are also credited as the source for the answer. Track both of them.
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