What is Considered to be a Good CTR?
I often get asked what is considered to be a good Click Through Rate (CTR). The answer to this question will depend on a number of things:
- The industry you’re advertising in.
- How well your ad is written (or produced for non-text ads).
- How targeted your keywords and keyphrases are.
- Where your ad is being shown.
Before we answer what a good CTR is, let’s look at how we can improve our performance in each of the above 4 areas.
The Industry
The industry you’re advertising in doesn’t require much attention as there’s nothing you can do to changes this - unless you’re in a product planning stage. But, if you’re looking up PPC tricks and tips, then chances are you’re into production already and ready to sell product.
Your Ad
If your ad is well written, you can achieve a massive increase in CTR. So how do you write better ads for PPC? Learn more about human psychology and experiment. You may have read that using the word because in a question will increase the likelihood of a favourable answer. In a similar way, you can use tricks like this to increase the probability that someone will click on your PPC ad. Learn. Test. Learn more. Test more. Achieve results.
Target Keywords and Keyphrases
Common keywords will get you a lot of traffic, but the market for these keywords may be so saturated that you won’t achieve a good CTR. Even worse, the popularity of these keywords will mean you have to pay top dollar to achieve the first page of search results. If you put in specific, targeted keywords, you can achieve a massive increase in CTR.
To target particularly well you can group your terms in “inverted commas”, or simply keep adding keywords to your phrase. You probably won’t receive much traffic as highly targeted keywords and phrases don’t get searched as much, but you’ll get a great CTR for very little Cost Per Click (CPC).
Filter out Sites
Ads shown on the Google Content Network often have a particularly bad CTR. The conversion rate can be even worse. The reason for this is because generally, a visitor is at a web site to read particular content or to find specific answers. If they find what they’re looking for at the site, then they won’t click on your ad. On the odd chance they do click your ad, the probability of your site capturing their interest is very low unless you have exactly the information they’re after.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. Some sites on the content network have visitors who are very open or who don’t mind spending money to save time or just get the job done. If you have the answers (or products) they need, you’ll get the clicks and the conversions. So the trick is to filter out the bad sites wisely.
So What is a Good CTR!?
So after all this, what is a good CTR? As you can see above, there are so many factors that there’s no way to predict a good CTR for your individual case, however here are some rules of thumb that we have observed:
- A CTR under 1% is almost always bad.
- A CTR of 1-2% is mediocre.
- A CTR greater than 2% is pretty good and what is you should be looking for.
- A CTR greater than 4% is fantastic.
- A CTR of 75% is mind blowing (and yes, it’s possible with targeted keywords and phrases - just ask our clients
).
May 31st, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Thank’s for your article. I just learn about adwords and I see this, really helpfull…
June 6th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Thank you very much for you article on CTR. I’ve been scrolling through Adwords and been unable to find what ir good and what is not!
Your article clarified this for me within moments and it all makes sense.
Thanks
Alison - a new and eager Adwords user
August 14th, 2008 at 8:51 am
I was researching this and was told that 1.x was a good CTR. I thought it must be b.s. because of the fact that I can get 3% without trying.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:07 am
I have just recently ( like 3 days ago ) decided to place adsense on my site, I have been getting 3 - 4 % immediately. Do you usually see an improvement / decline over time ? I would imagine that this was a fairly flat curve neither up nor down over time.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
thanks for the article. I used to get 1 to 2%. I then read perry marshall book, and now average around 10% for my keywords. honest. give his book a look! adam libman
June 28th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
These figures appear to be quite low. I have a site with a CTR of 25 - 30% for the past four years and I am a bit disappointed with a new site that “only” has a 4.5% CTR.
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:41 am
Great article thanks!
As a newbie, I wanted to focus having a useful, informative and content rich site, yet my CTR has really sffered due to lack of ads and bad placement. I’m on about 0.75% overall which is awful (it was 33% for yesterday alone though).
I think I have some homework to do - which is ironic considering what my expertise is lol!
September 17th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
I thought i was doing really good for having 10% CTR. But after reading this articles and the comments, seems like there is more I need to improve. BTW, thanks for the post.
October 7th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I think that the industry makes a big difference in CTR. Some verticals are so competitive, that you are just beating your head against the wall with AdWords trying to get some good performance. In general, I think your rules of thumb are pretty good indicators of ad performance, regardless of vertical.
Good post!
February 8th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
I was alleyways wondering if my CTR of about 15% was good enough. Now I know I can do much better.
February 15th, 2010 at 2:28 am
I am seeing around 7% CTR for my ads and think that is fine. I just don’t see how greater than 10% is even possible.
February 25th, 2010 at 7:16 am
The competition for keywords is really caused a spike in CPC. I haven’t looked at it for well over a year and man what a difference in cost.
May 20th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Hey thanks for the useful inf i was always wondering about Google adword CTR really now my confidence if high enough.
June 13th, 2010 at 4:03 am
CTR is related to ad placement right.?? So well placed ad will increase the CTR.
July 6th, 2010 at 9:58 am
Thank you for this article - extremely useful, as just trying out doing PPC myself and testing the water with one of my companies. will bookmark and re-read and get to work on increasing my CTR
August 5th, 2010 at 5:48 am
Wow. So right now I’m doing about 1.5 percent. Looks like I’ve got some work to do!
August 26th, 2010 at 3:38 am
My CTR is always under 2%
September 9th, 2010 at 6:33 am
Thank you for writing this article. I was curious about this. I will bookmark it.
October 5th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
As long as we’re clear, you are talking about Adwords, not Adsense. But sense the comments seem to be a mix, I’m had a 15% CTR for adsense, but usually average between 5-10% CTR. Think less ads, better placement, and blending, color choices.
November 24th, 2010 at 12:37 am
For good CTR make product specific websites. Generic keywods like TV, mobile will not give you good CTR
February 15th, 2011 at 12:46 pm
CTR improves dramatically when you have keywords with very little competition. If there is no other ad at the top of the page, obviously your becomes the most tempting.
February 26th, 2011 at 6:17 am
realy good article
my
fom PT
Best Regards
March 20th, 2011 at 3:18 am
Thanks for this. We’re currently at 2.5% and will use the strategy of eliminating high-traffic, low-performing keywords to hopefully get to 5%.
March 23rd, 2011 at 12:13 pm
It’s difficult for me to think in such a high CTR (75%), I would be pretty comfortable with a 2-5% CTR.
March 29th, 2011 at 7:45 am
Interesting that this article was written quite a while ago now (2006!) yet the figures quoted are still broadly in line with my experience with more recent Adwords CTRs.
I have some small, tight accounts targeting 2 or 3 phrase match / strict match keywords which routinely yield >10% CTRs month on month, and within those campaigns I regularly see CTRs of 75%, 100%, 200%(!) maybe 2 or 3 days out of a month. So in that context, yes, very high CTRs are possible, but I think it’d be unrealistic to quote that kind of performance as ‘usual’ for most advertisers when averaged out over time.
I’m very happy if I can manage CTRs of 3.5-4% in highly competitive, generic keyword type campaigns.
April 1st, 2011 at 2:44 pm
As a Newbie, I am permanently browsing online for articles that can benefit me. Thank you … Incredible information provided,
April 18th, 2011 at 12:23 am
Anything over 3% is good, but except less if you have several ads visible above the fold.
April 23rd, 2011 at 1:47 am
google can be so vague in their explanation of things. THX
May 28th, 2011 at 2:52 am
You say…
•A CTR under 1% is almost always bad.
•A CTR of 1-2% is mediocre.
•A CTR greater than 2% is pretty good and what is you should be looking for.
Are you referring to a “Page-CTR” or an “Ad request CTR”. They will be different depending on how many ads you have on the page.
June 10th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
Its difficult for me to think in terms of 75% CTR. I am pretty happy with a CTR of within 3%-5% and most importantly if I have great conversions and keep the Conversion Cost low.
Thanks. Your information was very useful.
August 12th, 2011 at 2:01 am
Exactly the information I was looking for — thanks for sharing!
August 29th, 2011 at 7:44 pm
I have a CTR for this site under 1 and is very sad. Can anyone tell me how to improve my CTR for the site in my name? Thanks in advance !
September 25th, 2011 at 11:21 pm
Okay, here are my stats, but no sales!! What’s wrong?
72
Impressions 176
CTR 40.91%
EPM N/A
EPC $0.00 USD
November 11th, 2011 at 11:51 pm
Cool ! My CTR is 3%
March 20th, 2012 at 4:04 pm
This very nice article about good CTR ! ! BUT I want your show of what is IDEAL CTR ! ! !