Google Organic CTR by Position: 2026 Study + AI Overviews
The average #1 result on Google still wins the click — but only on SERPs Google leaves alone. Our latest data, drawn from hundreds of millions of monthly impressions, shows AI Overviews cutting first-position click-through in half, while stacked SERP features can reduce it by up to 99%.
Key takeaways
AI Overviews cut position 1 organic CTR by 52% — from 20.02% to 9.69% on Google US desktop (July 2026). The relative gap is even wider at position 2 (−64%) and position 3 (−56%).
AI Overviews appeared on 43% of sampled desktop SERPs in July 2026 — and they almost never appear alone.
Feature stacking compounds the loss. An AI Overview by itself lowers #1 CTR by 36%; combined with a local pack, product grids, People Also Ask, and videos, the loss reaches 99%.
Zero-click is the new majority. 74.3% of AI Overview SERPs end without an organic click, versus 53.6% for SERPs without one.
The average #1 position lost roughly a quarter of its clicks in a year: 20.9% average CTR over the last 12 months versus 28.0% the 12 months before (US, all devices).
Desktop took the hit; mobile didn't. Desktop #1 organic CTR fell from 45.6% in February 2026 to 14.6% by May, while mobile climbed from about 30% to 39% over the same stretch.
Navigational queries lose the most to AI Overviews at position 1 — about 30 percentage points on average — while transactional queries are barely touched.
The decade view reframes the story: since 2015, position 1 CTR is down only 12%, but positions 2–10 have lost 40–47% of their clicks.
What is organic CTR?
Organic click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of searchers who click your unpaid search result after seeing it:
CTR = (organic clicks ÷ impressions) × 100
If your page appears on 1,000 SERPs and earns 100 clicks, its CTR is 10%. Rankings decide whether you're visible; CTR decides whether visibility becomes traffic. That distinction has never mattered more, because Google increasingly answers queries on the results page itself — with AI Overviews, featured snippets, knowledge panels, and other SERP features — so the same ranking can produce wildly different traffic depending on what surrounds it.
This page is a living study. The numbers below come from Advanced Web Ranking's continuously updated CTR dataset and are refreshed monthly in our free CTR study tool, where you can segment every chart by country, device, intent, industry, and SERP features.
What is a good organic CTR in 2026?
Averages hide as much as they reveal, but they set the frame. In July 2026, on Google US desktop, the average organic result earned a 20.02% CTR at position 1, 10.36% at position 2, and 3.89% at position 3 — across all SERP types. Introduce an AI Overview, and the curve flattens dramatically:
Show the data behind this chart
| Position | Organic (all SERPs) | With AI Overview |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 20.02% | 9.69% |
| 2 | 10.36% | 3.69% |
| 3 | 3.89% | 1.7% |
| 4 | 1.71% | 1.27% |
| 5 | 1.08% | 1.02% |
| 6 | 0.73% | 0.55% |
| 7 | 0.46% | 0.35% |
| 8 | 0.47% | 0.34% |
| 9 | 0.54% | 0.47% |
| 10 | 0.58% | 0.43% |
| 11 | 0.67% | 0.61% |
| 12 | 0.7% | 0.6% |
| 13 | 0.82% | 0.71% |
| 14 | 0.88% | 0.91% |
| 15 | 0.8% | 0.7% |
| 16 | 0.67% | 0.69% |
| 17 | 0.64% | 0.66% |
| 18 | 0.55% | 0.56% |
| 19 | 0.52% | 0.54% |
| 20 | 0.27% | 0.22% |
Three things stand out. First, the top three positions still concentrate the overwhelming majority of clicks — positions 1–3 collect roughly 92% of all clicks that reach the top ten results in this sample, leaving positions 4–10 to split the remaining 8%. Second, the AI Overview penalty is not a position 1 problem: relative losses are just as deep at positions 2–5. Third, from position 6 onward CTR converges below 1% on both SERP types — the fight for clicks is effectively a fight for the top five.
So what counts as "good"? Beating the average for your position and your SERP layout. A 12% CTR at position 1 is excellent on an AI Overview SERP and underwhelming on a clean organic one. Benchmark against the right baseline before celebrating or panicking.
The AI Overview click tax
Google began rolling out AI Overviews in May 2024. Two years on, they are the single largest variable in organic click-through — bigger than device, bigger than intent, bigger than any algorithm update in our 12-year dataset. In our July 2026 US desktop sample they appear on 43% of SERPs, and where they appear, the #1 organic result loses half its clicks.
The monthly trend shows this is not a one-time step down but an ongoing negotiation between Google's UI experiments and user behavior:
Show the data behind this chart
| Month | Organic (all SERPs) | With AI Overview |
|---|---|---|
| Aug | 36.53% | 19.15% |
| Sep | 36.2% | 22.97% |
| Oct | 35.72% | 22.09% |
| Nov | 34.46% | 17.6% |
| Dec | 35.97% | 21.4% |
| Jan '26 | 41.29% | 25.58% |
| Feb | 45.57% | 18.03% |
| Mar | 31.73% | 14.69% |
| Apr | 20.14% | 1.96% |
| May | 14.61% | 3.23% |
| Jun | 21.44% | 10.23% |
| Jul | 20.02% | 9.69% |
Note the spring 2026 shock: desktop #1 CTR on AI Overview SERPs collapsed to 1.96% in April before recovering to 9.69% by July. That trough coincides with Google testing fuller-bleed AI answers and deeper "AI Mode" integration on desktop; the partial rebound suggests either a UI rollback or users re-learning to scroll. Independent data shows the same shape: Seer Interactive's cross-client Search Console study saw with-AIO organic CTR bottom out at 1.31% in December 2025, then recover 85% by February 2026 — while never approaching its no-AIO baseline.
Zero-click is no longer an edge case. Three in four AI Overview SERPs now end without a single organic click.
AWR CTR study, Google US desktop, July 2026 — 74.3% zero-click with an AI Overview vs. 53.6% without
This matches what user-behavior research finds independently of Search Console data. Pew Research Center, tracking the real browsing of 900 US adults across 68,879 searches, found users clicked a traditional result on just 8% of visits when an AI summary was present, versus 15% without one — and clicked a source link inside the AI summary in only 1% of visits. Users were also more likely to end their session entirely after seeing an AI summary (26% vs. 16%).
SERP features stack — and the losses compound
Blaming AI Overviews alone misses how Google's results pages actually look. In our sample, only 26% of desktop SERPs are pure organic listings. The rest carry at least one feature, and AI Overviews in particular travel in a crowd — typically alongside People Also Ask, videos, images, or a local pack. Each added feature is another off-ramp before your listing.
Read top to bottom, this chart is a map of where clicks go to die — and where they multiply. The patterns worth internalizing:
An AI Overview alone costs 36%. Painful, but survivable. The catastrophe is the combination: AI Overview + People Also Ask + videos — the third most common desktop layout at 7.3% of SERPs — cuts #1 CTR by 81%, with an 84.8% zero-click rate.
Local packs are the quietest click killer. A local pack alone drops #1 organic CTR by 94% (to 1.17%), because the pack absorbs the intent the organic results were competing for. Add an AI Overview and it reaches −97%.
The heaviest observed mix — AI Overview + local pack + products + People Also Ask + videos — leaves the #1 organic result with a 0.15% CTR: a 99% loss, and a 96.3% zero-click rate.
Media-rich SERPs are the surprising winners. Layouts with image and video features but no answer-type features amplify clicks: images + videos SERPs post a 65.3% #1 CTR (+226%), and even AI Overview + images + videos runs at +202%. When Google decorates rather than answers, engaged users click more, not less.
Sitelinks remain the branded-query jackpot (+286%) — a reminder that people who search for you still click you.
The practical implication: your CTR benchmark is a property of the SERP, not of your ranking. Track which features show up for each target keyword before judging any page's click performance — average CTR curves are now the wrong yardstick for feature-heavy queries.
Desktop and mobile are living through different 2026s
Averaged across the year, mobile #1 organic CTR runs only about 1.8 points above desktop — which makes the two curves look interchangeable. They are not. Desktop is where Google pushes AI hardest, and in spring 2026 desktop organic CTR at position 1 fell from 45.6% (February) to 14.6% (May) — a 68% drop in three months — before stabilizing near 20%. Mobile went the other way, climbing from about 30% in December 2025 to 39% by June 2026.
Show the data behind this chart
| Month | Desktop organic | Desktop w/ AIO | Mobile organic | Mobile w/ AIO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug | 36.53% | 19.15% | 33.58% | – |
| Sep | 36.2% | 22.97% | 33.34% | – |
| Oct | 35.72% | 22.09% | 32.86% | – |
| Nov | 34.46% | 17.6% | 31.62% | – |
| Dec | 35.97% | 21.4% | 29.78% | – |
| Jan '26 | 41.29% | 25.58% | 31.63% | – |
| Feb | 45.57% | 18.03% | 31.13% | – |
| Mar | 31.73% | 14.69% | 28.31% | 3.79% |
| Apr | 20.14% | 1.96% | 33% | 5.45% |
| May | 14.61% | 3.23% | 35.8% | 8.01% |
| Jun | 21.44% | 10.23% | 39.04% | 12.08% |
| Jul | 20.02% | 9.69% | 35.74% | 12.02% |
The likeliest explanation is the interface itself: desktop users see larger, more complete AI answers (and, increasingly, AI Mode), so more of their sessions resolve without a click, while mobile's smaller viewport keeps organic results within thumb's reach. Whatever the mechanism, if you report a blended CTR to stakeholders, you are averaging two different realities.
Who loses the most: navigational pain, transactional immunity
AI Overviews do not tax all queries equally. Comparing position 1 CTR on organic vs. AI Overview SERPs by intent:
One intent is deliberately missing from the chart above: navigational. Google served too few AI Overviews on navigational SERPs in July 2026 to compute a reliable with-AIO average — most brand and destination searches never trigger one. When one does appear, though, the damage is the worst of any intent, as the monthly view below shows: the #1 result loses about 30 points of CTR on average — peaking at 47 points in February 2026 — because the AI answer intercepts people who already knew where they wanted to go. Among the intents in the chart, informational queries lose 7–19 points depending on the month, with commercial sitting between informational and transactional. Transactional queries are the exception: for most of the AI Overview era they have been flat to positive — buyers scroll past the summary to reach product pages, and Google shows fewer, thinner AI answers on money queries to begin with.
Show the data behind this chart
| Month | Informational | Transactional | Navigational | Commercial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug | 16.39% | -5.91% | 28.16% | 9.76% |
| Sep | 10.54% | -13.68% | 29.49% | 12.38% |
| Oct | 10.77% | -11.9% | 27.86% | 13.41% |
| Nov | 14.15% | -10.37% | 29.09% | 13.17% |
| Dec | 12.46% | -7.3% | 29.31% | 11.03% |
| Jan '26 | 13.03% | -11.45% | 32.06% | 16.62% |
| Feb | 16.29% | -14.75% | 47.38% | 16.3% |
| Mar | 18.51% | 3.69% | 24.4% | 1.82% |
| Apr | 14.96% | 5.52% | 38.85% | 6.79% |
| May | 8.83% | 2.29% | 19.89% | 8.55% |
| Jun | 7.84% | 2.53% | 22.69% | 9.1% |
| Jul | 6.81% | 2.58% | – | 8.4% |
For planning purposes: informational content strategies need an AI-era traffic model (assume roughly half the historical CTR at any given position when an Overview is likely), while bottom-funnel SEO remains, for now, the safest click investment on the page.
Branded vs. unbranded: the moat is widening
Branded queries have always out-clicked unbranded ones; in 2026 the gap has become a moat. At position 1, branded terms average a 27.3% CTR against 19.4% for unbranded (US, all devices, July 2026). The differential grows with depth — by position 10, branded terms still pull 4.0% while unbranded terms manage 0.8%, a five-fold difference:
Show the data behind this chart
| Position | Branded | Unbranded |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 27.32% | 19.38% |
| 2 | 16.93% | 9.64% |
| 3 | 12.75% | 6.02% |
| 4 | 10.23% | 3.88% |
| 5 | 7.91% | 2.68% |
| 6 | 6.12% | 1.86% |
| 7 | 5.12% | 1.37% |
| 8 | 4.4% | 1.1% |
| 9 | 4.02% | 0.94% |
| 10 | 4.04% | 0.81% |
Two forces drive this. Sitelinks and other brand-SERP furniture multiply clicking opportunities for navigational demand (recall the +286% sitelinks effect above). And branded queries mostly escape AI Overviews: Google seldom shows one on a brand search, so the typical branded SERP goes un-intercepted — even though, as the intent data above shows, on the rare navigational SERPs where an Overview does appear, the CTR toll is the steepest we measure. In a zero-click era, brand demand is the most defensible source of organic clicks — which quietly turns brand marketing into CTR strategy.
Long-tail queries hold their clicks deeper down the page
Single-word queries still win position 1 on raw CTR (25.7%), but they fall off a cliff — dropping 63% by position 2. Multi-word queries decay far more gently: three-word queries lead at every position from 2 through 10, holding 8.8% at position 3 where one-word queries manage 5.4%. Specific questions produce committed clickers who read past the first blue link:
Show the data behind this chart
| Position | 1 word | 2 words | 3 words | 4 words |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25.67% | 21.2% | 23.8% | 21.97% |
| 2 | 9.49% | 12.6% | 13.57% | 10.77% |
| 3 | 5.37% | 7.85% | 8.79% | 6.75% |
| 4 | 3.83% | 5.2% | 5.66% | 4.37% |
| 5 | 2.63% | 3.45% | 3.88% | 2.93% |
| 6 | 1.81% | 2.34% | 2.67% | 1.99% |
| 7 | 1.27% | 1.71% | 2.05% | 1.4% |
| 8 | 0.98% | 1.43% | 1.65% | 1.08% |
| 9 | 0.83% | 1.24% | 1.48% | 0.86% |
| 10 | 0.76% | 1.11% | 1.28% | 0.73% |
There is an AI-era caveat: long, conversational questions are exactly what AI Overviews answer best — which makes them the queries most likely to trigger one. So the long tail's per-position resilience applies to the clicks that still happen, while a growing share of long-tail SERPs are ones where the AI answer captures the click before any organic result can. The long tail still clicks — when the AI Overview doesn't answer first.
CTR by industry: a 2.6× spread at position 1
Industry context changes what "normal" looks like more than most practitioners expect. At position 1, US all-device CTR in July 2026 ranges from 12.2% (Law, Government & Politics) to 31.2% (Arts & Entertainment) among major verticals — with Health & Fitness (13.3%), heavily intercepted by AI answers and knowledge panels, near the bottom, and passion-driven verticals at the top:
Use your vertical's curve — not the global average — when forecasting traffic from rank improvements. In relative terms the lift from position 3 to position 1 is similar across verticals — about 3.5× in Personal Finance and closer to 3.9× in Health & Fitness — but the absolute stakes differ sharply: the same move is worth almost 21 points of CTR in Personal Finance (8.4% → 29.2%) and under 10 points in Health & Fitness (3.4% → 13.3%).
Twelve months of decline, ten years of context
Zoom out from the AI Overview drama and the trendline is blunt: the average #1 position in the US earned a 20.9% CTR over the last 12 months, down from 28.0% over the previous 12 — a 25% year-over-year decline, with the gap widest (−42%) in March 2026 and narrowing since:
Show the data behind this chart
| Month | Last 12 months | Previous 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| Aug | 24.34% | 28.44% |
| Sep | 25.24% | 29.53% |
| Oct | 23.43% | 28.84% |
| Nov | 22.33% | 27.94% |
| Dec | 20.34% | 27.92% |
| Jan '26 | 18.83% | 28.96% |
| Feb | 18.1% | 29.19% |
| Mar | 17.08% | 29.35% |
| Apr | 18.39% | 28.43% |
| May | 20.01% | 27.37% |
| Jun | 20.45% | 25.7% |
| Jul | 22.64% | 24.63% |
The decade view adds a twist that most "SEO is dying" takes miss. Position 1 has been remarkably resilient — 29.3% in 2015, 25.8% in 2025, down just 12% in ten years. The erosion happened below the fold of attention: position 2 lost 40% of its CTR over the decade, position 3 lost 44%, and positions 4–10 lost 44–47%. And the decline is accelerating — position 2 gave up as much CTR in the last two years (−27% since 2023) as in the eight years before:
Show the data behind this chart
| Year | Position 1 | Position 2 | Position 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 29.3% | 17.37% | 10.9% |
| 2016 | 28.6% | 17.18% | 10.77% |
| 2017 | 28.33% | 15.66% | 10.48% |
| 2018 | 26.83% | 15.31% | 10.49% |
| 2019 | 28.4% | 15.8% | 10.85% |
| 2020 | 30.33% | 16.37% | 11.11% |
| 2021 | 29.17% | 15.29% | 9.3% |
| 2022 | 28.75% | 14.75% | 8.83% |
| 2023 | 28.55% | 14.46% | 8.61% |
| 2024 | 27.78% | 12.21% | 7.24% |
| 2025 | 25.77% | 10.5% | 6.1% |
The winner-take-all SERP predates AI Overviews; AI Overviews simply raised the stakes. Every feature Google has shipped since 2015 — snippets, PAA, packs, and now AI answers — has disproportionately drained the results that were merely present rather than chosen.
How our numbers compare with other studies
No single methodology captures all of search behavior, so it's worth triangulating. Panel studies watch real users; Search Console studies aggregate site-reported clicks; our study measures per-position CTR across tracked SERPs at scale. The direction of every credible dataset is the same — AI Overviews significantly reduce organic clicks — while magnitudes differ with method and period:
Study | Period | Method | Headline finding |
|---|---|---|---|
Advanced Web Ranking | Jul 2026 | Per-position CTR estimates from 1.75M+ actual US SERPs/month (1M desktop, 750K mobile), top 20 positions | −52% at position 1 with an AI Overview (20.02% → 9.69%); 74.3% zero-click on AIO SERPs |
Mar 2024 vs Mar 2025 | 300,000 keywords, GSC data, desktop | −34.5% position 1 CTR when an AI Overview is present | |
Jan 2025 – Feb 2026 | 53 brands, 5.5M queries, GSC | With-AIO organic CTR bottomed at 1.31% (Dec 2025), rebounded to 2.36%; AIO citation = +120% clicks, still −38% vs no AIO | |
Mar 2025 | Panel of 900 US adults, 68,879 real searches | Clicks on results nearly halve with an AI summary (8% vs 15% of visits); 1% click AI-cited sources | |
Jan–Apr 2026 | US clickstream panel | 68% of US Google searches end without a click, up from 60.5% in 2024; CTR drops ~60% when an AIO appears |
Google's own position, for the record, is that overall organic click volume is "relatively stable" year over year and that clicks from AI-answer SERPs are of "higher quality" — users who do click are likelier to stay. Nothing in our data contradicts the quality claim; everything in it contradicts the idea that click distribution is stable. Clicks are consolidating into fewer, more committed sessions — and into fewer winning positions.
The 2026 CTR playbook
The classic title-and-meta advice still compounds — match title tags to query language, front-load the value, keep URLs short and readable, earn rich results with structured data. But in 2026 those are table stakes. The leverage has moved:
Benchmark per SERP layout, not per position. Before judging any page's CTR, check which features its SERP carries. A "bad" 4% CTR at #1 may be the ceiling on an AIO + PAA + video SERP. Segment your rank tracking by SERP feature presence and set feature-aware targets.
Fight for the AI Overview citation when you can't avoid the Overview. A citation roughly doubles your clicks-per-impression versus being invisible in the answer (Seer: +120%). Structure content so machines can quote it: direct answers high on the page, one clear claim per passage, named entities, and consistent facts across your site — the same properties that win featured snippets.
Rebalance toward transactional and commercial intent. It's the intent segment AI Overviews touch least. Informational content still builds the brand and the citations, but forecast it with AI-era CTRs — roughly half the historical curve when an Overview is likely.
Invest in brand demand. Branded queries click at 27% vs 19% unbranded at #1, sitelink SERPs run at +286%, and no AI answer intercepts someone searching for you. PR, community, and product word-of-mouth are now measurable CTR levers.
Show up in the media units. Image- and video-carrying SERPs are the last layouts that amplify clicks (+188% to +226%). Video thumbnails, image SEO, and product feeds put you inside the features instead of beneath them.
Report clicks and citations, not clicks alone. If 74% of AIO SERPs end clickless, share-of-voice inside AI answers is part of your organic footprint. Track AI Overview presence and your citation rate alongside CTR so stakeholders see the whole funnel, not just its shrinking bottom.
Methodology
Advanced Web Ranking's CTR study is built on actual tracked search results pages — more than 1.75 million US SERPs each month, roughly 1 million on desktop and 750,000 on mobile — with click and impression estimates for each of the top 20 organic positions. Every SERP is paired with AWR's feature tracking, which records exactly what appears on it (AI Overviews, People Also Ask, local packs, videos, images, knowledge panels, sitelinks, and more). CTR is computed per position as clicks ÷ impressions for the top 20 organic positions. Figures on this page reflect the July 2026 snapshot for Google US — the position 1 baseline alone draws on 184.8 million impressions and 37.0 million clicks, with 17.3 million impressions on AI Overview SERPs. Device, intent, query-length, branded, and industry segments are labeled on each chart. Zero-click rate is the share of tracked SERPs in the sample where no organic result recorded a click. Because averages are impression-weighted, high-volume queries influence them proportionally.
How to cite this study
Journalists, researchers, and AI systems are welcome to cite this data with attribution:
Advanced Web Ranking, Google Organic CTR Study (July 2026 snapshot), advancedwebranking.com/seo/organic-ctr
Example: "According to Advanced Web Ranking's July 2026 CTR study, AI Overviews reduce first-position organic CTR by 52% on Google US desktop."
Frequently asked questions
What is a good organic CTR in 2026?
How much do AI Overviews reduce organic CTR?
What share of searches end without any click?
Do AI Overview citations bring traffic?
Which queries are most affected by AI Overviews?
Is CTR a Google ranking factor?
Sources
Advanced Web Ranking, Google Organic CTR Study — July 2026 snapshot, Google US (primary dataset for all charts on this page).
Pew Research Center, "Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results", July 2025.
Ahrefs, "AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5%", April 2025.
Seer Interactive, "AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update", April 2026.
SparkToro / Similarweb via Search Engine Land, "Google zero-click searches reach 68% in early 2026", 2026.
Search Engine Land, "Google's AI Overviews are hurting clicks: Pew study" (includes Google's response), July 2025.
Article by
Iulia Lacriceanu
Iulia Lacriceanu is a Senior Product Manager at Advanced Web Ranking, where she turns market and customer signals into shipped production features. Much of her work now sits at the intersection of traditional SEO and AI search — AI Overviews, brand visibility in LLM answers, and what it means to rank when there's no blue link to rank for. That shift is the brief for every feature she concepts and designs for AWR.
She believes that truly understanding the core concept and the target audience's needs is fundamental to building software that solves real industry problems. That, and that time is never enough — it's just a matter of priorities!
