CTR Curve
CTR Curve plots the click-through rate your site actually achieves at each rank position on the search results page, computed from your own 90 days of Search Console data. The shape of the curve — how steeply CTR falls from position 1 to position 10 — is one of the most useful diagnostic tools in SEO. Once you know your own curve you can stop relying on industry-average benchmarks and instead say with confidence "a query at position 6 with 1.5% CTR is performing in line with our site" or "below it".
What it measures
- Position bucket — integer rank position from 1 down to 10 (and beyond, bucketed in the long tail).
- Impressions / Clicks — totals over the trailing 90 days at that rank.
- CTR — clicks ÷ impressions for the bucket, the headline number on the curve.
How we compute it
- Across the trailing 90 days, every query × URL impression carries an average position. We round that position down to an integer bucket (so position 3.4 contributes to bucket 3).
- For each bucket we sum impressions and clicks, then compute CTR as the ratio.
- The result is a curve: bucket 1 typically sits in the 25–35% CTR range; bucket 10 typically sits below 1%; and the slope between them is your site's reality.
Why a custom curve, not an industry benchmark?
Industry-average CTR curves (the ones you see in blog posts) are computed across thousands of sites and millions of queries. They're useful as a sanity check but wrong for any individual site, because the real CTR at any rank depends on: how branded vs unbranded your queries are, how much SERP-feature density (PAA, AI overviews, ads, image packs) is interleaved above your link, and how compelling your title and meta description are. A site-specific curve captures all of those effects automatically.
Scenarios you'll see
A specific query in CTR Opportunities outperforms the bucket average — strong title, brand, or rich result. Worth studying as a template you can copy onto under-performers in the same band.
A query whose CTR is materially below your own bucket average is the textbook candidate for a title/meta-description rewrite. The CTR Opportunities report uses your curve as the implicit benchmark.
If your bucket-1 CTR is well below the typical 25–35%, AI overviews or featured snippets are intercepting clicks. Your curve absorbs this — that's why you should benchmark against your own curve, not an industry one.
Sites with strong brand recognition often show a very steep curve (very high bucket-1 CTR). That's expected — and a reason not to be alarmed when non-branded queries on your site achieve lower bucket-1 CTRs than the curve suggests.
If buckets 4–7 all have similar CTR, the SERP for that band is noisy with features. Less ranking-improvement leverage; consider focusing on getting into bucket 1–3.
CTR collapses below 0.5% past position 10 — confirms why Striking Distance focuses on positions 11–20: that's the band where a small ranking gain produces an outsized CTR gain.
What to do with it
- Use this curve as your benchmark when reading CTR Opportunities and Top Queries — query CTR is "good" or "bad" relative to your own curve, not an industry average.
- If your bucket-1 CTR is unusually low (< 15%), audit the SERPs of your top queries: AI overviews / PAA / featured snippets are likely eating clicks. Lean into schema and brand.
- Re-check the curve after major SERP shifts (Google updates, AI overview rollouts) — the curve will adapt and so should your expectations.
Caveats & limits
- Position is reported as an average per query × URL × day. The integer bucketing is therefore a smoothing approximation, not a literal "ranked first today" count.
- Sites with very low traffic produce noisy curves; the curve becomes meaningful with at least a few thousand impressions across the buckets.
- The 90-day window means very recent SERP-feature changes take a few weeks to fully reshape the curve.
Related reports
- CTR Opportunities — uses this curve as its implicit benchmark.
- Striking Distance — leverages the long-tail cliff in your curve.
- Rankings Distribution — companion view: how many of your queries sit in each position band.
- Top Queries — pair with this curve to spot above- and below-curve performers.