What’s a Good Click-Through Rate (CTR) for Google Ads?

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Click-through rate, or CTR, is hugely important for advertisers. In most PPC platforms, including Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) and Bing Ads, your CTR helps determine both your ad rank and your cost per click. The higher your CTR in Google Ads, the better your ranking and the lower your costs.

Click-through rate is the percentage of total ad views that result in clicks, and it is one of the key factors in Google’s Quality Score formula. Google uses Quality Score to determine both your ad position and actual cost per click.

what's a good click through rate in adwords

So, what’s a good click-through rate then?

What’s a good click-through rate for Google Ads? It depends on your industry, your business type, your goals and other factors.

But as a starting point, you can use our free benchmarking tools to see if your current Google Ads click-through rate is higher or lower than average in your industry.

Average Click-Through Rates in Google Ads by Industry

Your ideal ad click-through rate takes time to determine. It’s not the same for everyone, and average CTR depends on such factors as your industry and keywords, and how competitive they are.

Still, it’s very helpful to have some general guidelines for starting your Google Ads campaign.

Based on our huge stores of client data, we’ve determined that the average CTR across all industries in Google Ads is 1.91% on the search network and 0.35% on the display network. The graphic below shows the variation in average click-through rate for twenty different industries.

average ctr in adwords

A good ctr for Google Ads, of course, is better than average, so you should be looking to beat these CTR benchmarks! We’ve found that high click-through rates not only lead to high Quality Scores – they also correlate with higher conversion rates.

If you’re curious about your own CTR in Google Ads, you can use the free Google Ads Performance Grader to measure your click-through rate and compare your CTR and other KPI’s to your competitors.

I know my CTR – now what?

Say you start with these benchmarks and decide to target a 3% click-through rate for your real estate business. You determine your target keywords, bid on these keywords, and set up your ads and landing pages with these keywords.

What’s next?

First, after a few weeks look at your ads’ click-through rates. This information can be found within the dashboard of your Google Ads account. (Or, you can run the Google Ads Performance Grader for a free CTR health check.) See how close your click-through rates are to your goal.

What's a Good CTR Google Ads

If your CTR’s are below your goal, consider the text of your ads. Are your ads enticing and emotional? Is your value prop clear? Are you including your keywords? If you don’t make your product or service appealing or easy to understand, customers won’t click on your ads.

Make sure you’re using ad extensions. They increase the size of your ad as well as increasing click-through rates.

Remember that it’s possible to have too high a click-through rate. If your CTR’s are strong but your conversion rate is low, you’re probably not going to achieve return on your advertising investment. You’ll be paying for clicks that don’t turn into customers. Make sure that your offer is really something that people want, and that your landing pages are optimized for conversion on all devices.

Monitor your click-through rates and conversions following any changes to your ads. If your income is greater than your click spend, consider shooting for a higher click-through rate. You can do this by improving your ad text, choosing better keywords, and incorporating negative keywords into your Google Ads campaigns. These actions should increase your number of qualified ad impressions, click-through rates and conversions.

More click-through rate tips

Here are a couple of additional things to consider when determining your ideal click-through rate for paid search:

  • Typically click-through rates for search ads are higher than click-through rates for ads on the display network. That’s because display ads aren’t so closely match to intent, and are often more about generating brand awareness than immediate conversions.
  • Ads tied to “softer” conversions, like a free quote, tend to generate higher click-through rates than ads for high-ticket items like enterprise software.
  • Ads for brand keywords drive some of the highest CTR’s of all and can raise your overall account Quality Score.

What did you learn? Is your click-through rate for Google Ads good enough?

Meet The Author

Christine Laubenstein

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