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Google Says Average AdWords CTR at 2%

posted on January 14, 2010


Google seldom comments on click through rates on its flagship AdWords product. It is, after all, where they get most of their income. With millions of searches performed every day, however, the rate doesn’t have to be very high for them to clean up.

And, as it turns out, it’s not. In a thread on the Google AdWords Help forum, Google employee AdWordsPro responded to a question on what a “general” guideline for expected clicks might be. While naturally, there’s a lot of variation among industries and specific keywords, it’s interesting to see a Google employee comment (albeit vaguely) on an average CTR.

Says AdWordsPro:

On the other hand, to give you a point of reference to shoot for, an average CTR is probably in the neighborhood of 2% – meaning that for every 100 impressions, you would have received 2 clicks. I personally don’t think that a CTR statistic is particularly meaningful or even valid until about 1000 impressions have been received, however.

Advertisers who have really taken the time to learn how AdWords works, and who spend lots of time managing their account and tuning things up often ‘earn’ a CTR in the double digits.

Naturally, paying attention to your account helps you make more money off it, like experimentation. AdWordsPro also notes that once you have a decent click through, the more important statistic is ROI.

Several years ago, we saw studies indicating that average CTR was around 3% (and there’s enough leeway in AdWordsPro’s statement that that’s certainly included).

What do you think? Does that sound like a reasonable average CTR?

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  • http://www.newhomessection.com Jayson

    That seems a little high for some of the campaigns I’ve seen, but I’ll admit that the campaigns were low priority in all cases and all were using G’s content network. If Pay Per Click takes up more of the budget and company resources, I’d certainly expect to see a 2% CTR.

    .-= Jayson´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at =-.

  • http://www.rustybrick.com/barry Barry Schwartz

    The via link doesn’t even work. waaaaa :(

    Thanks for reading. :)

    • http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Jordan McCollum

      Thanks, Barry—all fixed!

      • http://www.rustybrick.com/barry Barry Schwartz

        Whoo hoo!!! :)
        .-= Barry Schwartz´s last blog ..Weird RustyBrick iTunes Hijinks =-.

  • http://www.adwordsanswers.com David Rothwell

    Like I post on the reply at the Google forum, if you structure your account correctly, it’s not difficult to achieve keyword, ad group and ad CTR of up to 100%

    What you’ve got to ask yourself is – whether it’s profitable at that rate.

    I publish numbers there that illustrate how it may not be (my CTR of 0.26% is profitable with Conversion Optimizer in charge for a lead-gen client).

    “CTR is for show, Conversion Cost is for Dough” (David)

  • http://www.e-interactive.es Pablo Mascaró

    I personally think that an overall 2% CTR sounds like a reasonable rate considering that Content network CTRs are, on average, quite lower than that but Search Network campaigns can be way over that 2% (as Google employee says, double digits CTRs.

    In addition, CTR rates depend strongly on account size and budget. As an example, small-medium accounts will aim for higher CTRs as this will increase their QS and consequently reduce their real CPCs, being able to enjoy good ad rankings with lower spending.

    Am i correct with that last sentence, or am i talking nonesense?

    Interesting post!

  • http://www.rypmarketing.com Adam Thompson

    From Google’s standpoint, a 2% or so CTR shouldn’t be too bad. If they have 10 ads on a page, a 2.5% CTR means 25% page CTR. Let’s say an average CPC of $0.50, that equals $125 effective page CPM. Not bad….

    ;-)

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  • peter

    when I started I had up to 60 clicks per day and high ctr. I was over
    the moon because didn’t expet such a respond but after a week I realize
    that something is wrong there were NO phone calls. checked again my
    account and discovered at the very bottom that there is small icon with
    negative keywords I added long list plus I put all of my keywords in
    “……….” or [........] and created 12 adgroups with 10 keywords and 2
    ads each. now I am slowly deleting low performing, low in rank
    keywords. you can’t expect high CTR from the add which is very low in
    rank you might have to consider increasing your max bid in order to push
    it up and then check CTR again( make sure that there is:

    1headline (including keyword)

    2ad text (including keyword)

    3your website DISPLAYED link/keyword

    4your
    website link should point potential client to the relevant place on
    your website (landing page) that will increase your quality score and
    therefore lower the cost of ppc

    I have now 3-6 clicks per day but those are really the people I want to visit my site and are interested in my services.

    synchronise your website and adwords with google analitics to have even greater control over your add

    http://fsdecorators.co.uk/

  • Diego

    Sure, 2-3% sounds about right… for an average.

    However if you fine tune your campaign, as every advertiser should, you can take that number to the double digits, just as the man says.

    http://www.gendo.com.ar

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