Google Says Average AdWords CTR at 2%

By Jordan McCollum on January 14, 2010

Google Says Average AdWords CTR at 2%

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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7 comments on “Google Says Average AdWords CTR at 2%”

Jayson Says:

January 14th, 2010 at 1:04 pm

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 =-.
Barry Schwartz Says:

January 14th, 2010 at 4:08 pm

The via link doesn’t even work. waaaaa

Thanks for reading.

Jordan McCollum Reply:
January 14th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Thanks, Barry—all fixed!

Barry Schwartz Reply:
January 14th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Whoo hoo!!!
.-= Barry Schwartz´s last blog ..Weird RustyBrick iTunes Hijinks =-.
David Rothwell Says:

January 15th, 2010 at 3:51 am

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)
Pablo Mascaró Says:

January 15th, 2010 at 6:46 am

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!
Adam Thompson Says:

January 18th, 2010 at 7:50 pm

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….

Marketing Pilgrim