> 5%
> 7%
> 10%?
Let's take the screen-perspective: After performing a google-search, on my monitor (widescreen-notebook 1280x800px) I see the following links ABOVE the fold:
1) 3 adwords links top left
2) five adwords links right
3) [a video, maps-entry or three froogle links]
4) the first one or two spots of the organic serps.
If you take into accout that there are only these ten links above the fold, I'd even say anything below 10% CTR is really bad? the first position "should" reach almost 20%, otherwise texting may be improved.
People who scroll down may find another bunch of links, summing up to approximately 20 "demands to act". Given this, any CTR below 5% should be considered unacceptable?
What percentage performs a second search without clicking anything (due to typing mistakes or bad results)? (The sum of all CTRs over the whole page plus this figure should give 100%)
What percentage of Joe Average does even know about the difference between organic serps and the three adwords links top left? That is: What percentage of surfers has adopted the habbit of immediately scrolling down = moving down the triangle of attention?
Before you can even get into CTR, you need to look at the specificity and commercial intent of the word.
Microsoft adLabs has a nice commercial intent tool.
The more commercial and the more specific the keyword, the higher the CTR.
A word like TV is so general, breaking a 1% can be successful.
A word like Samsung HLR5667W is so specific that you could get a 10-15% + out of the first few ad positions.
Sure. But isn't it the open secret of adwords to acchive small costs by high CTR by finetuning the keyphrases?
Only the larger companies like ebay might use the branding effect of getting a high number of impressions by using very general terms. As soon as you target a high direct and measurable ROI, you will stick to phrases as specific as possible.
And if you manage one or more adwords accounts: Don't you work with thumb-rules?
But us mere mortals simply don't have enough info to know or understand the pattern - so, for us,
"It depends!"
All I'm trying to do, is beat my "competitor" (or the "certified adwords advisor" he has probably hired) by paying a closer attention to the keyphrases in question and the specific costs for each.
The typical situation for a small company in a niche market like mine is this: You are faced with someone selling similar products as you, always on spot #1. If the texting of this competitor's ads does not look "genious", it is quite likely he simply has hired a (bad) agency, which did nothing but setup an adwords account and fire a relatively general term with the maximum spent. Great chances to beat him.
After having collected sufficient amount of keyword-data, you can do so on two levels:
A) raise bids on keyword-level
B) improve texting in order to raise CTR on group-level.
You cannot automate B). So if your algorithms managed to finetune A) to an acceptable level insofar as all keyword-phrases show up on the intended position: Where's the threshold you're satisfied with, or up to what point would you say: "Hey, I think we can do better than with this text!"
[edited by: Oliver_Henniges at 12:19 am (utc) on Nov. 10, 2008]
Your competitor sitting at #1 for "best blue widgets" may achieve a higher ctr then you would sitting at the same point because of the recognisability of his brand.
There is no rule of thumb for this, what we each work on is the accounts history and maintained testing to improve CTR's because there is no one answer to your question.
If you would like to find out what sort of CTR others are getting however you could look at something like Hitwise, which will give you a good idea of what is happening in your marketplace, but it will not necessarily give you an answer to your question.
