Only 1% of people click on adwords?

[Jon12345]

Checking my stats, it seems to suggest that only 1% of people click on the adwords.

Does that mean 99% of people click on the SERPS listings and only 1% on adwords?

Jon

[258cib]

It's going to vary on the other ads, the page, the subject... but that sounds about average. Maybe a little better than average. A one percent click-through rate is considered pretty good.

[Shak]

roflmao

how many industries are you measuring

Shak

[sem4u]

Yours might be 1%, mine certainly isn't :)

It is true that most people click on the organic results though (or search and don't click).

[eWhisper]

I've heard unofficially on several occasions that the average ad CTR is 2%. Now this is unofficial, as no one on G wants to confirm this.

If that was the average ad CTR, then it would depend on the average ads per page to determine the total AdWords CTR.

The average ads per page is a number I doubt anyone outside of G knows.

It is very industry & demographic specific, but I think 1% for all of AdWords is way too low.

[bcc1234]

I had some adds with 15% CTR, so it's definitely not 1% :)

[Jon12345]

I have broad match on so would this alter anything?

[sem4u]

If people search for "unrelated widget" then yes.

[258cib]

I have seen CLR as high at 24 percent. When you're hot, you're hot. But, that was for a very limited time.

I think 2 percent could, indeed, be average. But, averages are really meaningless.

[skibum]

It's probably more like 30-50% of people click on AdWords but each ad, on average, gets a 1-2% CTR.

[Jon12345]

How does that work?

[eWhisper]

How does that work?

These are just numbers, so can go many ways.

If 10% of people click on an ad. And the average person who clicks on an ad, actually visits 2 different advertising websites. And the average search result page has 5 ads on it.

Then, the total CTR for all AdWords is 20%, but the adverage ad would only get a 4% CTR.

[Jon12345]

Dont think that was quite what was meant. skibum said, "It's probably more like 30-50% of people click on AdWords".

[webdiversity]

There's CTR and then there's the number of people that actually click on anything.

100 impressions probably equates to a 40-60% click rate (so 60 clicks) of those you might find that the top ad (northern one) may get 10 of those clicks (will show as 10% CTR but really is a 16.6% click rate), the top organic might get 15 of them (15% CTR but really 25% click rate)....

But as everyone states your numbers will vary.

Look at it another way, 1% CTR = 99% of the people who saw your ad thought it sucked.

[eWhisper]

Look at it another way, 1% CTR = 99% of the people who saw your ad thought it sucked.

LOL - kinda true.

However, I don't think most people see every ad. If your ad is below the fold, you'll get impressions without your ad ever being actualy seen.

[martinibuster]

Also take into consideration how many people search using One Keyword (amazingly, they do). One keyword searches may likely result in irrelevant organic results, which is where the relevancy (and higher ctr) of adwords will come in.

Consider this: Even when I sit on the top 2 positions for a variation of my product's name, my adwords ad may still pull in 7-20% ctr. Go figure.

[beren]

As advertisers, do we necessarily want high CTRs? I don't think so. We only want people to click when they might be interested in our product or service. And even then, I'd rather they click on my website in the SERPs. So it could be argued that the lower the CTR, the better.

We run ads to catch web users who do click on these ads instead of our SERP listings and to take up the screen real estate from competitors who use AdWords.

How often do you click on an ad that comes up from a search? I do it well under 1% of the time.

[your_store]

You would think the small percentage of Adwords' clicks could be attributed to the fact most phrases don't have ads on them. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the total traffic from Adwords was less than 1% of the traffic coming from the free SERPS. Of course, we're if we're talking only about commercial searches then the percentages would change dramatically.

[rich42]

I've heard from someone who works for a company that begins with 'G' that adwords make up a -large- portion of all google clicks.

my best ads get up to 15% CTR - most are closer to 2%-3%. If other highly ranked get around 10%, and a bunch other get 1-4% - I could imagine the collective CTR of all adwords being over 30%...

[AdWordsAdvisor]

How often do you click on an ad that comes up from a search? I do it well under 1% of the time.

Maybe I should be disqualified from answering this question because I work at AdWords, and of course I trust the ads. However, I'm gonna answer it anyway:

* If I'm searching for information, I click on the ads about 0 to 1% of the time. The exception is when a headline really catches my eye, and I'm suddenly feeling like some retail therapy.

* If I'm seriously looking to buy something, I click on an ad about 80 to 90% of the time. The exception is when I don't see an ad that 'speaks to me'.

Conclusion: it depends a lot on what people are looking for: information, or a great deal on something they are actively looking to purchase.

Another conclusion: being able to trust the ads, as a consumer, is really important.

AWA

[chewy]

In hundreds of hours of Googling about, I think I have probably clicked on less than 100 Google AdWords ads.

Please, AWA, I would love to know how is it that Google came up with the 1% CTR as the "must have" CTR inorder to continue.

And I do know my own clients, in some cases are getting solid, ongoing, 14 - 16% CTR on certain keywords

?

[europeforvisitors]

Conclusion: it depends a lot on what people are looking for: information, or a great deal on something they are actively looking to purchase.

And a lot of the time, those people are looking for information to help them make a purchase--which means they'll ignore the AdWord on a SERP, but they may be interested in clicking an AdSense ad on a content page after they've read the article, a review, etc.

FWIW, I think a lot of advertisers fail to understand the value of "decision support" in the form of articles and reviews. PR people understand, though, and so do readers--some of whom will write to say things like: "Thanks for your article on Platinum Cruises, which convinced me to go ahead and book a Platinum Cruise to Elbonia this fall."

[beren]

Yes, I agree with europeforvisitors about information content. Some web users might go looking for websites to buy things right away, and they might click on the AdWords ads.

But many have the mindset that they are researching a topic before making a purchase. This is especially true for big ticket items or when people have no experience buying the item. These people are less likely to click on an ad, and more likely to read website they perceive as authoritative. Web users with any sort of sophistication can tell the difference between SERPS and ads and conciously or subconciously think SERPS are more authoritative. In these markets, it makes sense to expect lower CTRs on the ads.