Today we are going to be talking about what’s a good click-through rate or CTR for your Google AdWords or pay-per-click account.

Now here’s a number of accounts that we’re managing and, as you can see, the click-through rates are a little bit all over the board. But what you don’t see is what each account has included in it.

So, we see an account here at 3.13%. Another account with a click-through rate of 8.6% (which is good). There is another account here that is not running. We also see accounts here with 2.98%, 7.09% and 2.89%.

OK, So What’s a Good CTR or Click Through Rate?

Depending on who you ask, you will get a lot of versions of what a good click-through rate is.

For example, here’s an article at WordStream, where it talks about the average click-through rate in AdWords across all industries is 3.17% on the search network and .46% on the display.

Now, why is it higher on the search network? This is because users on the search network are typically looking for what you have to offer. They’re going to Google and they’re typing in what they’re searching for when they want it.

On the display network, it’s typically lower, because people might be on a news website and they see a display ad on the right-hand side with an advertisement for your company or brand, and you’re kind of hoping that they’re going to trip over your ad. They’re not necessairly looking to find you at that particular moment.

Sometimes it might be used for specials or branding or retargeting, but those ads that you see on other websites (not Google) are considered the display network.

Now, based on WordStream’s client data, they’ve determined that the average click-through rate across all industries in Google AdWords is about 1.9% on the search network and .35% on the display.

So you can see how much the numbers vary, just between Google’s network (3.17% on the search network and .46% on the display), and WordStream’s client data (1.9% and .35% respectively).

Now this is not a number that you should live and die by. This is just one company’s perspective. But WordStream is in the PPC industry and they obviously do have a lot of data.

Here’s Another Industry Take on the Ideal CTR

Now in another article, PPC Hero, talks about 2% is probably a decent click-through rate.

When we’re talking about search advertising though, there are a number of other factors, and those factors can be:

1. 1. What type of business are you advertising?
   2. What type of devices are you advertising on? Are you advertising on desktop, are you advertising on a mobile device or tablet as both of them can have an effect.
   3. How much competition are you advertising against?
   4. And going back to to the basics of AdWords, how relevant is your ad? When someone does a search query are they finding your keywords in the ad, is the ad displayed relevant to what they’re looking for?
   5. When searchers get to the landing page are they seeing what they should be seeing? Because if they’re not finding what they’re looking for and they’re having a bad experience on that landing page, Google will typically knock their average position down, which means their ad will be further down on the page and less people are likely to see it. That will effect the click-through rate as well.

Our Benchmark Click-Through Rate

Now, in our agency we like to see at least a 3% CTR to start with (with a new campaign). But once again, you don’t always know what’s going on, just by looking at the overall account CTR, so be careful.

If you take a look at this account, you can see we there is an overall account CTR of 2.89%, which normally I would consider it underperforming a bit (especially since this is an older account).

However, this is an overall account CTR. Inside the account you’ll see we have a retargeting or a display ad going and you can see that CTR is at .27%, but throughout the rest of the account, we see CTR’s of 10.13%, 12.98%, 9.29%. Those are all outstanding click-through rates.

What’s happening is that the overall score is being drug down by the retargeting campaign itself (which has a much lower Click-through rate.

So, don’t always go by the overall click-through rate. Get in there and see what’s going on inside the account.

With that said, and based on the previous articles and our more than 10 years of AdWords experience, we like to shoot for 3% or above for a goal.

Now, in some campaigns it’s a little bit more difficult than others, but that 3% CTR is our benchmark.

In the PPC Hero article, they talk about 2%, and on the WordStream article they talk about, between 1.9% and 3.17%, but it gives you some different ideas.

The biggest thing is, no matter what your Click-through rate is, the goal is to always be improving it. When we look at this account where we’ve got a 10% click-through rate, and 12% and 13%, these will vary.

I’ve seen them as high as 16 or 17% on any given month. With that said, they did not start there. I know that this particular account started at about 1.5% the first month that we turned it on.

So, you always need to be working towards increasing your click-through rate and typically, as long as your funnel is converting correctly, the higher the click-through rate, means more clicks, means more conversions.

So, What’s Your Ideal CTR?

Thanks for checking out What is a Good Click Through Rate or CTR in Google Ads?