Organic CTR by Industry: Benchmarks Across Verticals

Why CTR Benchmarks Are Reported by Vertical

Click-through rate is not a single number that applies uniformly across the web. The proportion of searchers who click a given organic position depends heavily on the kind of query being asked, the layout of the results page, and the mix of intent behind those searches. Because these factors cluster by industry, CTR data is frequently reported by vertical, and the spread between the highest and lowest industries is large enough to matter for anyone setting traffic expectations.

The reason verticals diverge comes down to three structural forces. First, intent mix: some industries are dominated by navigational and high-consideration queries where a searcher is hunting for one specific, authoritative answer, which concentrates clicks on the top result. Others are dominated by transactional or comparison-shopping queries where attention is spread across many competing listings. Second, SERP-feature density: the prevalence of paid ads, Shopping carousels, knowledge panels, featured snippets, and increasingly AI Overviews differs sharply by topic, and every feature that occupies vertical space on the results page siphons clicks away from standard organic links. Third, query type: informational queries that an answer box can resolve behave very differently from those that require a visit to a website.

Understanding these benchmarks matters because they set the realistic ceiling for organic traffic. A result that ranks first in a vertical where position-1 CTR averages 35% is operating in a fundamentally different environment from one in a vertical averaging 43%, even before any consideration of title or meta-description quality. The numbers also feed directly into how NavBoost, Google's click-based re-ranking system, interprets whether a result is meeting or missing its expected engagement.

A note on terminology

Throughout this article, "organic CTR" refers to the share of searchers who click a standard organic (blue-link) result at a given position, excluding paid ads. Studies differ on whether they count clicks on SERP features such as snippets or local packs as organic, which is one of several reasons the absolute figures vary between sources.

Organic CTR by Industry: The Benchmark Table

The most granular publicly available breakdown of organic CTR by industry comes from First Page Sage, which consolidated data from client SEO campaigns spanning 2019 to 2023. The dataset is weighted roughly 73% B2B and 27% B2C, a composition worth keeping in mind when reading the numbers. The table below reproduces their reported position-1, position-2, and position-3 organic CTR figures for each tracked vertical, sortable by any column.

Industry	Position 1 CTR	Position 2 CTR	Position 3 CTR
PCB Design & Manufacturing	43.4%	19.0%	10.3%
Industrial IoT	43.0%	19.2%	10.8%
Aerospace & Defense	42.7%	19.6%	11.2%
Biotech	42.2%	18.0%	11.7%
Engineering	41.9%	16.2%	14.1%
Medical Device	41.2%	19.1%	11.1%
IT & Managed Services	41.1%	20.2%	10.6%
Commercial Insurance	41.0%	17.4%	9.5%
Manufacturing	40.4%	18.4%	9.2%
Automotive	40.3%	18.6%	9.9%
Oil & Gas	40.1%	18.6%	9.4%
Software Development	39.9%	18.9%	10.0%
B2B SaaS	39.8%	19.0%	11.3%
Transportation & Logistics	39.8%	18.0%	10.7%
Overall Average	39.6%	18.4%	10.1%
Aviation	39.5%	17.4%	12.5%
Financial Services	39.4%	16.4%	9.1%
Construction	39.1%	18.9%	10.1%
Environmental Services	38.9%	17.5%	9.2%
Cybersecurity	38.7%	16.9%	9.9%
Real Estate	38.3%	18.5%	9.7%
Pharmaceutical	38.1%	18.1%	9.9%
Entertainment	37.7%	19.7%	12.7%
Solar Energy	37.6%	16.9%	9.0%
Higher Education & College	37.5%	18.8%	10.0%
Legal Services	36.8%	19.3%	10.4%
Addiction Treatment	36.4%	17.5%	9.5%
HVAC Services	36.2%	19.2%	9.6%
eCommerce	35.4%	15.2%	8.8%

Figure 1: Organic CTR by industry for the top three positions. Source: First Page Sage, "Clickthrough Rates by Industry," based on 2019 to 2023 client campaign data (≈73% B2B, 27% B2C). Sortable by any column.

Several patterns are immediately visible. The highest position-1 rates cluster among technical and high-consideration B2B verticals: PCB design and manufacturing at 43.4%, Industrial IoT at 43.0%, Aerospace and Defense at 42.7%, and Biotech at 42.2%. The lowest sit among consumer-facing and service categories where SERPs are more cluttered: ecommerce at 35.4%, HVAC services at 36.2%, and legal services at 36.8%. The gap between the top and bottom industries at position one is roughly eight percentage points, which translates into a substantial difference in clicks per thousand impressions.

Why Verticals Diverge

The ordering in the table is not random. It traces back to the three structural forces introduced earlier, and examining each explains why a B2B engineering firm and an online retailer can rank in the same position yet capture very different shares of clicks.

Intent Mix

Industries dominated by research-heavy, single-answer queries tend to concentrate clicks at the top. When an engineer searches for a specification, a datasheet, or a vendor with a particular capability, the query usually has one clearly best answer, and the searcher clicks it decisively. This produces high position-1 CTR and a steep drop-off afterward. By contrast, ecommerce and many consumer-service queries carry comparison intent: the searcher wants to evaluate several options, so clicks distribute across multiple listings and the position-1 share is lower. The way Google reads these different behaviors is the subject of search intent and click signals, since intent shapes not just how many people click but which result ultimately earns the satisfying, session-ending click.

SERP-Feature and Ad Density

The single largest driver of vertical differences is how crowded the results page is with non-organic elements. SISTRIX's analysis of position-1 CTR by SERP layout makes the effect concrete: a clean, navigational result with sitelinks earns about 46.9% CTR, a pure organic result earns roughly 34.2%, but the same position drops to about 18.8% when Google Ads are present, 16.7% when a knowledge panel appears, and 13.7% when a Google Shopping block sits at the top. Verticals such as ecommerce, travel, and consumer finance trigger these features constantly, which structurally suppresses their organic CTR regardless of how good the listing is. A deeper treatment of this dynamic is available in the analysis of how SERP features change CTR.

SERP layout at position 1	Approx. position-1 CTR	Verticals most affected
Sitelinks (navigational)	46.9%	Branded queries across all verticals
Pure organic (no features)	34.2%	Niche B2B, technical research
Featured snippet present	23.3%	Informational, how-to, YMYL
Google Ads present	18.8%	Insurance, legal, SaaS, finance
Knowledge panel present	16.7%	Brands, entities, healthcare
Google Shopping present	13.7%	eCommerce, retail, consumer goods
AI Overview present	11–15%	Healthcare, finance, informational

Figure 2: Position-1 organic CTR by SERP layout. Source: SISTRIX CTR-by-SERP-type analysis, with AI Overview range from composite 2025–2026 estimates. The layout a vertical typically triggers explains much of its industry CTR.

Query Type and Answerability

The third force is whether the typical query in a vertical can be answered on the results page itself. Informational queries that resolve to a short factual answer, common in healthcare, finance, and general knowledge categories, are precisely the ones Google now serves with featured snippets and AI Overviews. When the answer appears in the SERP, a large share of searchers never click anything, which depresses organic CTR for those verticals even when the underlying ranking is strong. Transactional and high-consideration queries, more common in B2B and big-ticket services, resist this because the searcher needs to reach a real page to convert.

The AI Overview Pressure on YMYL Verticals

The industry benchmarks in Figure 1 predate the widespread rollout of AI Overviews, and the verticals most exposed to that rollout are now diverging from their historical baselines. AI Overviews appear on a growing majority of results pages, and their effect on clicks is severe: Ahrefs measured an approximately 58% reduction in clicks to the top organic result when an AI Overview is present. Composite 2025 data shows that when an AI Overview appears, as many as 83% of searches end without any click to the open web, compared with roughly 60% without one.

This pressure falls unevenly. Your-money-or-your-life categories such as healthcare, insurance, and personal finance are saturated with the informational, answer-seeking queries that most reliably trigger AI Overviews. These verticals can retain strong per-impression CTR on the searches that still produce a click, while losing a rising share of searches to zero-click outcomes entirely. The distinction is important: the organic CTR of the link that does get clicked may hold steady, but the volume of clickable searches shrinks. Industries built on transactional intent, including much of B2B SaaS and high-ticket professional services, have so far been more insulated because their queries less often resolve to a summarized answer.

Reading the trend lines carefully

GrowthSRC's 2025 study of 200,000 keywords found position-1 CTR fell from 28% to 19% year over year, a 32% decline, while positions 6 through 10 actually rose 30.63% as users scrolled past AI Overviews to reach conventional links. Aggregate position-level declines like these cut across industries, so a vertical's historical benchmark should be treated as an upper bound rather than a current expectation in 2026.

Caveats When Comparing Across Studies

The single most important rule when working with industry CTR data is that figures from different studies are not interchangeable. The benchmarks in Figure 1 come from one methodology; other widely cited studies report dramatically different absolute numbers for what sounds like the same metric. The reasons are worth understanding before any cross-study comparison.

Data source differs. First Page Sage draws on aggregated client-campaign performance. seoClarity's study, the largest by volume at 750 billion impressions, reports a desktop position-1 CTR near 8.17%, far below First Page Sage's ≈40%, largely because it blends every SERP type and device together rather than isolating clean organic results. Backlinko's analysis of 4 million results and SISTRIX's clickstream data land at yet other figures.
Date range matters. A benchmark built on 2019 to 2023 data reflects a pre-AI-Overview SERP. A 2025 or 2026 figure captures a fundamentally different results page. Comparing the two as if they measure the same environment overstates how much any single vertical has changed.
Mobile and desktop are often blended. seoClarity and others report sharply different curves by device, and a blended number hides that split. The distinction is large enough that it deserves separate treatment in mobile versus desktop CTR.
SERP-feature handling is inconsistent. Some studies strip out queries with heavy features; others include everything. Since features are the dominant driver of vertical differences, this choice alone can move an industry's reported CTR by ten points or more.

The practical consequence is that the relative ordering of industries within a single consistent dataset is far more trustworthy than the absolute percentage attached to any one vertical. Engineering reliably outperforms ecommerce within First Page Sage's data; whether engineering's "true" position-1 CTR is 41.9% or 12% depends entirely on which study and which SERP environment you adopt.

Tying Industry CTR Back to NavBoost

Industry benchmarks describe how many people click, but Google's NavBoost system cares about something more specific: whether a result earns more or fewer satisfying clicks than expected for its query. NavBoost does not hold every vertical to a single CTR standard. Instead, it evaluates a result's click behavior against the normal pattern for the specific query and SERP it appears on, then applies its squashing function to compress extreme values and aggregates the signal across a 13-month rolling window.

This is where the concept of an expected CTR becomes central. NavBoost effectively maintains a model of how clicks should distribute for a given query, and a result that beats that expectation, especially through the strong, session-ending lastLongestClick rather than a quick pogo-stick back to the SERP, gains a re-ranking advantage. Industry averages are a useful sanity check for setting traffic expectations, but they are not the yardstick NavBoost uses. The relevant comparison is the expected CTR curve for the exact query and layout, which is far more granular than any vertical label.

For practitioners, this reframes the role of industry benchmarks. If a result ranks first in a vertical whose position-1 average is 40% but earns only 25%, that gap is a signal that the title, meta description, or snippet is underperforming relative to peers on the same SERP, which is exactly the kind of underperformance NavBoost can detect and act on. The fix lives in the realm of organic CTR improvement rather than in chasing a published average. Conversely, a vertical with a structurally low average due to Shopping carousels or AI Overviews is not "failing" by ranking below 40%; it is operating against a different expected curve, and NavBoost reads it accordingly.

The broader point is that industry CTR data sets context, not targets. A result's standing in NavBoost depends on outperforming its specific competitive set and delivering post-click satisfaction, both of which are invisible in a vertical-level average. The benchmarks tell a site what environment it is competing in; NavBoost decides how well it is competing within that environment.

Using Industry Benchmarks Without Misreading Them

Industry CTR benchmarks are most useful as a diagnostic frame rather than a performance target. A few principles keep them honest:

Match the study to the SERP you actually face. If your queries trigger Shopping carousels or AI Overviews, a clean-SERP benchmark like First Page Sage's overstates your realistic ceiling. Use the SERP-feature figures in Figure 2 to adjust.
Compare within, not across, datasets. Use one source's relative ordering to judge whether your vertical is structurally high or low CTR, and avoid mixing absolute numbers from different studies into one comparison.
Treat pre-2024 benchmarks as upper bounds. AI Overviews and the broader shift toward zero-click results have lowered live CTR across most positions since these baselines were collected.
Diagnose the gap, not the average. A meaningful shortfall against your vertical's position benchmark points to a snippet or intent-match problem, which is actionable. Matching the average is not itself the goal; outperforming the expected curve for your query is.

Used this way, the benchmark table becomes a starting point for asking better questions, not a scorecard. The most valuable insight it offers is not "what should my CTR be" but "what kind of results page am I competing on, and is my listing punching above or below its weight within it."

Frequently Asked Questions

Which industries have the highest organic click-through rate?

In First Page Sage's industry benchmarks, technical and high-consideration B2B verticals tend to post the highest position-1 organic CTR. PCB design and manufacturing (43.4%), Industrial IoT (43.0%), Aerospace and Defense (42.7%), Biotech (42.2%), and Medical Device (41.2%) sit at the top, all above the cross-industry average of roughly 39.6%. These verticals share dense, navigational-leaning queries and SERPs that carry fewer competing features like Shopping carousels or large ad blocks.

Why does ecommerce have a lower organic CTR than B2B?

Ecommerce queries trigger SERPs crowded with Google Shopping carousels, product image packs, paid listings, and review-rich results, all of which pull clicks away from standard organic links before users reach them. First Page Sage records ecommerce position-1 organic CTR at about 35.4%, below the 39.6% average. SISTRIX data confirms the pattern at the SERP-feature level: when Google Shopping appears, position-1 CTR falls to roughly 13.7%.

Can CTR benchmarks from different industries be compared directly?

Only with caution. CTR studies differ in their data source (Search Console clickstream versus panel data), their date range, whether mobile and desktop are blended, and how they treat SERP features. First Page Sage's industry table draws on 2019 to 2023 client campaigns weighted toward B2B, while seoClarity's 750-billion-impression study reports a much lower desktop position-1 figure near 8.17%. The numbers are not interchangeable; the relative ordering between industries is more reliable than the absolute percentages.

Does industry CTR affect Google rankings through NavBoost?

NavBoost evaluates click behavior relative to what is normal for a given query, not against a fixed industry benchmark. The squashing function and 13-month aggregation mean Google compares a result's clicks and post-click satisfaction against the expected pattern for that query type. Industry CTR averages are useful context for setting realistic expectations, but NavBoost reacts to whether a result outperforms or underperforms its peers on the same SERP, including dwell time and pogo-sticking, not to a published vertical average.

Why is healthcare and finance CTR falling faster than other verticals?

Healthcare and finance are your-money-or-your-life (YMYL) categories where Google increasingly surfaces AI Overviews and other answer features that resolve queries on the results page. Ahrefs found an approximately 58% reduction in clicks to the top organic result when an AI Overview is present, and these informational, answer-seeking queries are exactly the ones most likely to trigger one. The underlying organic links can still carry strong per-impression CTR, but a growing share of searches end with no click at all.

What is a good organic CTR for my industry?

A useful benchmark is the expected CTR for your ranking position within your vertical, not a single universal number. If your vertical's position-1 average is near 40% and you rank first while earning 25%, your title and meta description are likely underperforming. The more important comparison is against the CTR curve for your specific query type and SERP layout, because a featured snippet, ad block, or AI Overview on the page changes the realistic ceiling far more than the industry label does.