SEARCHENGINES
Massive CTR Study Reveals Actionable Insights
seoClarity published a research study of 750 billion and over 30 billion clicks, the largest CTR study ever. The massive research yields multiple insights into Google search CTR behavior that can benefit online marketing strategies today.
The data analysis, which is broken down by device, industry, country and seasonality, uncovers surprising details that may have otherwise gone unknown.
CTR of Top 10 Positions
The top 5 search results positions on desktop averaged 17.16% clicks while on mobile it was less, an average of 15.54%.
What the data revealed, averaged across 17 billion keywords, is that searchers on desktop were more likely to click on the top five search results than those on mobile.
It’s not a giant leap between the two, but there is a difference.
Conversely, users on mobile were more likely to scroll down to click on the bottom of the search results, positions six through ten.
It’s a notable difference between the two.
The summed averages are:
- Desktop CTR Position 1: 8.17%
- Mobile CTR Position 1: 6.74%
The pattern of regression for the top ten search positions, which means how much the CTR decreases between positions 1 through 10, is the same between desktop and mobile.
But the click patterns on the top three between mobile and desktop are very different.
seoClarity observes:
“Although the pattern of regression is the same on both devices, it shows that (across a large dataset) ranking in the lower positions on page 1 is actually better for your organic traffic on mobile than it is on desktop.
Presumably, the familiarity of scrolling on mobile devices plays a part in organic CTRs.”
CTR Per Country (All Devices)
seoClarity reviewed differences in CTR between countries where they had the most data and discovered startling differences.
There is a clear difference in CTRs between countries, with people in the United States less likely to click on the number one position than people searching in the UK, Canada, India or Japan.
Google Search CTR By Country
The percentages below are summed averages between the top twenty positions.
Top 5 CTR for Google Search Position 1 by Country
- India 14.88%
- Japan 13.94%
- Canada 11.30%
- UK 10.48%
- US 9.13%
Ranking in position one is important in every country but it is especially important in India and Japan.
seoClarity noticed an interesting CTR pattern for the lower ranking pages:
“Another interesting observation is the CTR in positions 17 through 20. In all 5 countries analyzed, those positions demonstrated a higher average CTR than positions 11 to 16.
We posit that this is reflective of browsing and scrolling behaviors.”
CTR by Seasonality
Looked at in a 12 month period, the CTR doesn’t vary a whole lot, it is fairly steady.
The highest CTR is in July at 2.29% and the lowest is in May with 2.12%. That’s a variance of 0.17.
Although that doesn’t seem like much of a difference there is actually an extraordinary difference that needs paying attention to, plus there’s a fascinating insight that goes along with that.
December, when one would expect the CTR to go up is actually the second lowest CTR in the SERPs, with May being the lowest month for CTR. The highest CTR is actually in July.
Here’s the CTR expressed as a graph:
Seasonal Fluctuations of CTR
seoClarity observes:
“December and Christmas traffic, including the January sales, are very much ‘average’ months when compared to the rest of the year.
This may be because users are migrating more towards the ‘shopping’ listings rather than clicking through the organic listings or increased competition among pay-per-click listings.”
I agree with seoClarity that the jump in CTR during the Summer may be due to vacationers who are researching things to do and places to go while on vacation and clicking through to websites more than usual because of that.
Broken down by device, mobile shows a consistently higher overall CTR than desktop and both display the same seasonal highs and lows.
Seasonal CTR Patterns on Desktop and Mobile Devices
CTR by Industry
The industry that a query belongs to makes a big difference in CTR and whether more of those clicks come from mobile or desktop devices. While it’s important to have a quality site experience regardless of device, knowing which device is going to have a higher clickthrough rate gives a marketer an important insight on their sales and targeting.
CTR in Apparel and Fashion Sectors
Clicks related to fashion search queries are higher on a desktop. While there must surely be variance when broken out by age groups, in general, fashion queries experience a significantly higher CTR on desktop over mobile devices.
CTR in Beauty and Personal Care Sectors
There is a greater search volume for mobile (331m) over desktop (118m).
However, there is an extraordinary difference between desktop and mobile in terms of CTR and incredibly there’s a huge gap between them on clicks to position one.
Sites in position one of Google’s search results on desktop receives 6.65% of all clicks while on mobile sites in position one garners 4.74% of all clicks.
As a reminder, these aren’t a straight percentage measurement of clicks (like position one receives XX% of clicks) but rather an average of all the clicks, as explained above.
CTR in Business And Industrial Sectors
The results for the business and industrial sectors are a bit of a shocker because there were more searches for business content carried out on mobile devices than on desktop.
According to seoClarity:
“Somewhat surprisingly, most searches in the business and industrial sectors come from mobile devices (1b impressions), which is 54% higher than the volume on desktop (649m).”
Additionally the CTR for mobile is less concentrated on position one as compared to desktop, meaning that the CTR is more spread out across the SERPs in mobile than on desktop, where the clicks tended to cluster in the top ranks.
Position 1 of Google SERPs
- Mobile: 6.66%
- Desktop: 8.60%
Position 2 of Google SERPs
- Mobile: 3.79%
- Desktop: 4.44%
Position 3 of Google SERPs
- Mobile: 2.41%
- Desktop: 2.55%
More searchers on mobile devices clicked on sites listed on positions 5 through 10 (except for position 6) compared with users on desktop devices.
Consumer Electronics
A similar CTR trend to Business and Industry manifests in the consumer electronics sector as well. There are more searches in mobile but less clicks concentrated in the top three positions than they are on desktop devices.
Top 3 CTR Dominates Desktop Devices More Than in Mobile
The trend toward a concentration of clicks in the top 3 for desktop devices in comparison with mobile devices is exhibited in almost every niche, except for the Finance sector where desktop and mobile device CTR in the top 3 are essentially tied.
Sectors Where Top 3 Dominates Desktop SERPs
- Apparel and Fashion
- Beauty and Personal Care
- Business and Industrial
- Consumer Electronics
- Health
- Home and Garden
- Jobs and Education
- Sports and Fitness
- Vehicles & Automotive
Sectors Where Top 3 Dominates Mobile SERPs
- Real Estate
- Retail & eCommerce
- Travel & Tourism
Why Are Top SERPs Less Popular in Mobile?
seoClarity surmised that mobile users are accustomed to scrolling and that’s why they tend to scroll past the top three to five search results more often than users on desktop devices.
It may also be possible that mobile devices have more situational contexts, additional search intents, than desktop devices.
Mobile device personalization could play a role in why mobile device users scroll past the top three to five search results.
seoClarity Research is Available Now
Read the full 53 page report on seoClarity for additional insights that can improve and enhance your marketing strategies, as this article only touches a few of the insights uncovered in this study that is the largest of its kind.
Download the research paper here:
https://www.seoclarity.net/mobile-desktop-ctr-study-11302/
SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: September 26, 2024
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Google Search ranking volatility remains heated but it spiked more again in the past 24-hours. Google updated its web search spam policies. Google AI Overviews don’t really show up for branded queries, but they may in some rare cases. Google Search has this recently viewed movies activity card. Google Search tests “states in the news” and “backstory” top stories sections in Google Search.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
-
Google Search Ranking Movement Heated, Volatility Continues 9/25
Google Search still has not calmed its ranking shifts, volatility and movement. The search results remain incredibly volatile with rankings and traffic changing again in a big way over the past day or so. I know I sound like a broken record but even some of the tools are adjusting their volatility thresholds to counter the new higher volatility in the search results. -
Google Updates Web Search Spam Policies
Google has refreshed and updated its web search policies documentation. The big change is Google added more language around the site reputation abuse policy, while expanding, simplifying and clarifying other sections of its search policies. -
Google AI Overviews For Branded & Navigational Queries???
Google AI Overviews generally do not show up for branded or navigational queries. So if you are searching for a brand or company, generally, Google has not shown an AI Overview. -
Google Recently Viewed Movies Activity Card
Google now can show movies you recently viewed as an “activity card.” I am not sure if this is based on a movie you actually went to see in the theatres, watched online or just based on you clicking on movie listings within Google Search. -
Google Search: States In The News
Google Search has this newish news or top stories carousel format that Google titled “States in the news.” It shows you news or top stories from news publishers related to the query by U.S. state. -
Google Search Backstory Top Stories Section
Google Search has this news or top stories section titled “Backstory.” It comes up from political queries, maybe other news queries. -
Sundar Pichai’s Google Soccer Jersey
Here is a photo from that event where Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, was kicking a soccer ball. This photo shows him holding a custom made Google soccer jersey.
Other Great Search Threads:
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
- Early sign-ups to EU’s AI Pact include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI — but Apple and Meta are missing, TechCrunch
- Exclusive: OpenAI to remove non-profit control and give Sam Altman equity, sources say, Reuters
- Google CEO Sundar Pichai Says Antitrust Trials Could Drag On for Many Years, Bloomberg
- Google files Brussels complaint against Microsoft cloud business, Financial Times (Sub)
- OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announces she’s leaving the company, CNBC
- OpenAI’s chief research officer has left, TechCrunch
- The AI platform shift and the opportunity ahead, Google Blog
- Why Mark Zuckerberg thinks AR glasses will replace your phone, The Verge
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
PPC
Search Features
Other Search
Feedback:
Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky and you can follow us on Facebook and on Google News and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Noindex Bug With JavaScript Pages
Google is reportedly working on fixing a bug with not being able to properly respond to a noindex directive on some JavaScript generated pages. This is happening for some React apps using Single Page Applications (SPAs) that have the noindex directive on them but Google is not picking it up and thus indexing pages that should not be indexed.
This issue was spotted by Mark Williams-Cook, the Director at Candour and Founder of AlsoAsked, a popular SEO tool. He posted about the issue on LinkedIn and said, “Here’s a screenshot of over 9,000 “noindex” pages being indexed. Adding ‘noindex’ via JS can be a solution, but it’s absolutely not reliable.”
Here is that screenshot from Google Search Console’s indexing report:
He later shared that Google is now aware of the issue and is working on fixing it. “I spoke to Googlers about this and it is a bug they are working on fixing,” he wrote.
Mark went on to explain that this is an example of a React app that has a meta “noindex” added via JavaScript, but the pages are nevertheless getting indexed.
Martin Splitt from Google did speak in the past about noindex meta and JavaScript pages and sometimes, Google does have a hard to processing them. But these days, Google shouldn’t be challenged by them. I guess in this case, Google was?
Again, I suspect in this case, Google fetched and rendered the page prior to the JavaScript executing the noindex meta data. So Googlebot didn’t see the noindex directive yet. This can happen, it is rare, but this can happen and obviously did happen. Google has warned about this before, including using JavaScript to generate structured data in some cases.
Mark’s solution was to use CloudFlare to serve the noindex directive prior to the JavaScript executing its own meta data (which is served in the HTTP header), but that was only after he found out Google was not picking up on the first solution he had. Mark wrote, “With some Single Page Applications (SPAs), it can be difficult to have control over what is shown before the JS is executed. In this instance, I managed to get the pages to set a “noindex” before JS was rendered by using Cloudflare Transform rules.”
So if you noticed this issue as well, hopefully Google will patch it up and if not, look for an alternative solution – like Mark did.
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Site Command For Image Search Not Fully Working?
It seems that Google made a change, intentionally or unintentionally, to the site command within Google Image Search. When you do a basic site command, without appending keywords to the query, then Google will return no image results.
Here is a screenshot:
I spotted this via Kunjal Chawhan on X over the weekend and pined Google about it but I did not hear back as of yet.
I did notice that when you append a query to the end of the site command, it does return results:
I suspect this is a bug but what do I know…
Forum discussion at X.
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