Click rates are determined by the SERP layout
Averages, as shown in the diagram above, distort the reality. They just show that, the average. The real click-through rates can look very different in your keyword environment and in your industry. Therefore, we took an additional big step in this analysis and evaluated the CTR for different SERP layouts.
By SERP layout we mean the specific composition of a Google results page (SERP). This consists largely of the classic, organic results, but is increasingly enriched with other boxes and features.
In this post, we focus on the most popular SERP layouts. For those, we take the first SERP result presented and remove keywords whose results pages consist of a combination of different feature boxes. This way we get comparable and clean data.
Most Keywords show purely organic results
Most of the keywords we measured consist of purely organic results: 10 blue links, as in the early days of Google, and no other distracting elements.
The more you work into the long-tail, the greater the proportion of purely organic SERPs. On the other hand, high-traffic keywords from the so-called short-head often consist of different features and boxes. The CTRs for purely organic SERPs look like this:
In the background (in grey) you can see the reference values from the graph above, i.e. the average values over all evaluated data. The blue line shows you the click rates for this specific SERP layout so you can easily see the differences and deviations. This also applies to other evaluations in this article.
In this case, it is clear to see that the click rate for all organic search results is above average for purely organic search results. In the first position there are even around 6 percentage points more clicks: 34.2% of the searchers click on the first results if the SERP layout consists exclusively of organic results.
SERPs with Sitelinks: 46.9% CTR on position #1
Next we have the evaluation of search results with Sitelinks. With the Sitelinks extension, Google offers further navigation links that lead to subpages. This integration takes up a lot of space and attention.
Sitelinks are shown by Google if there is a clear website intent, i.e. the user is looking for a specific website, but does not know the URL or does not know how to use a web browser. This can also be seen very clearly in the click rates:
In the first position (the one with the sitelinks) we see a clear above-average click rate of 46.9% – almost every second click on this SERP. In comparison, the CTRs in the other positions are significantly lower: in position three, for example, the click rate is less than half the average (5.6% to 11.0%).
Here the effects of the website intent become clear: the user is looking for a special website and is only ready to click on it as a result. In most cases, the searcher does not accept other results – a ranking for keywords with website intentions is only worthwhile if you are the website or brand you are looking for.
Featured snippets cost 5.3 percentage points CTR
Google refers to organic results which are highlighted in the SERPs as featured snippets. Both the text snippet is more extensive than with conventional organic positions, and additional elements such as images or tables are sometimes included:
Featured snippets can be found in the search results if Google assumes a Know Simple search intent: the searcher wants to know something and Google believes that it can deliver the answer directly in the search results. This can also be seen in the CTRs:
The first ranking (with the featured snippet) has a click rate that is 5.3% percentage points below the average value for this position. The website from which the information in the featured snippet is created does not benefit from the featured snippet.
Interestingly, the websites at positions # 2 and # 3 benefit significantly: the second place winner gets almost five additional percentage points compared to the average (15.7% to 20.5%) and the third place site will also get an increase in CTR from 11% to 13.3%.
Google Apps: the extreme version of the featured snippet
When searching with the search intention “Know”, the user wants to expand his knowledge. “Know Simple” is a special case defined by Google – here Google believes it can answer the question directly in the search results and shows a featured snippet. According to a our data, a version of the know-simple search result not officially defined by Google, is even more extreme.
You can see this for translations, dictionaries, weather and many other keyword groups. The result is clearly shown in the distribution of the click rate:
The CTR in the first position almost halved and plummeted from 28.5% to only 16.3%. But there is also a first in the data: the second organic position receives more clicks than the first position with this SERP layout: 16.7% of Google users click on # 2 and not on # 1.
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