Short answer: In 2026, click-through rate (CTR) collapses almost completely past Google’s first page. On a real, independently run WordPress blog our team operates, pages at an average position of roughly 70 earned a sitewide CTR of about 0.2%, while the single asset that ranked on page one (around position 1.5) earned 12.2% — close to a 60x difference. Impressions on pages 5–9 are, in practical terms, worth almost nothing.
Most published “CTR by position” charts are built from huge aggregated clickstream datasets. This is the opposite: a transparent, single-site look at what those curves feel like for an ordinary blog competing in an AI-influenced search results page. The numbers below are first-party Google Search Console data from a recent 90-day window, reported as rates rather than raw counts.
Key findings
- The page-one cliff is real and steep. A page ranking at ~1.5 earned a 12.2% CTR. The blog’s overall average position (~70) earned 0.2%. That is roughly a 60x gap between page one and page seven.
- Impressions are not opportunity. Across roughly 900 queries that generated impressions, the seven highest-impression queries all sat on pages 5–9 — and every one of them produced zero clicks over the full 90 days.
- The cliff is now an indexing cliff too. Only about 46% of the blog’s known pages were indexed by Google. The rest were crawled or discovered and left unindexed — a quality and authority signal, not a technical block.
Methodology
All data comes from the Google Search Console property for one real WordPress blog our team manages, over a single recent 90-day period. We report click-through rate (clicks ÷ impressions) and average position exactly as Search Console calculates them, and the page-indexing counts from the Search Console Page Indexing report. To protect the site’s competitive data we publish rates and ratios rather than absolute traffic figures. This is one site with a modest sample, so treat the exact percentages as directional rather than universal — but the shape of the curve matches what larger studies consistently show. You can reproduce this analysis on your own blog in about ten minutes using the Search Console Performance and Page Indexing reports.
CTR by Google position (first-party data)
Representative pages from the same blog, grouped by roughly where they rank. Single-site sample; lower-position rows are based on small click volumes and are shown to illustrate the pattern, not to pin down an exact number.
| Search results page | Approx. position | Observed CTR |
|---|---|---|
| Page 1 (top) | ~1.5 | 12.2% |
| Page 1 (lower) | ~7–8 | 2–5% |
| Page 2 | ~13 | ~2% |
| Page 3 | ~28 | ~2% |
| Pages 6–7 | ~60–72 | 0.4–0.7% |
| Site-wide average | ~70 | 0.2% |
The practical takeaway: there is a meaningful CTR difference between position 1 and positions 2–5, and then a long, flat near-zero tail from page two onward. Moving a page from position 60 to position 40 changes almost nothing. Moving it onto page one changes everything.
The indexing cliff few people talk about
Ranking is only half the story. Before a page can earn any CTR, Google has to choose to index it. On this blog, the Page Indexing report told a blunt story: roughly 46% of known pages were indexed, and the majority of the rest fell into “Crawled — currently not indexed” and “Discovered — currently not indexed.”
Those statuses are not technical errors. Google found the pages, looked at them, and decided they were not worth storing. For a blog in 2026, that is the clearest possible signal that the bottleneck is content quality, uniqueness, internal linking and site authority — not meta tags. If you want to fix it, start with blog site architecture and internal linking and consolidate thin pages rather than chasing more posts.
Why the cliff is steeper in the AI era
Two forces compound the old “nobody clicks page two” rule. First, AI Overviews and AI chat answers increasingly satisfy informational queries on the results page itself, so even strong rankings leak fewer clicks than they did a few years ago. Second, the visible organic results are pushed further down by ads, snippets and AI panels. The result is that the value of a top-three position has gone up, while the value of anything on page two or beyond has gone down toward zero. If your content is also being read by AI engines, being cited inside AI answers is becoming as important as the blue link.
What to do with this
- Stop counting impressions as progress. Track how many of your queries actually sit in positions 1–5. That is the only band that converts.
- Concentrate, don’t scatter. Ten genuinely first-page-worthy pages beat a hundred page-six pages that Google won’t even index.
- Fix indexing first. Check your own Page Indexing report. If less than ~70% of your pages are indexed, improve and interlink existing content before publishing more.
- Optimise the pages already on page one for CTR (title and description), because that is where small gains produce real clicks. See our guide to building a blog that ranks in 2026.
Once a page is on the first page, the next lever is being quoted inside AI answers. Our Answer-First Test is a 5-signal framework for making a page citation-ready for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
For the strategic takeaway behind this data, see The Volume Trap.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good CTR by Google position in 2026?
As a rough benchmark, position 1 commonly earns a double-digit CTR, positions 2–5 fall into the low-to-mid single digits, and anything on page two or beyond typically earns well under 1%. In our first-party data the top position earned 12.2% while the site-wide average near position 70 earned 0.2%.
Why do pages get impressions but no clicks?
Because impressions are counted even when you rank on page five or six, where almost no one looks. In our data the seven highest-impression queries all ranked on pages 5–9 and earned zero clicks over 90 days. Impressions confirm relevance; they do not confirm visibility.
What does “Crawled — currently not indexed” mean?
It means Google fetched the page but chose not to add it to its index, usually because the content is seen as thin, duplicative or low-authority. It is a quality signal rather than a technical fault, and it is fixed with better content, internal links and authority — not with tags.
Is it worth trying to move a page from position 60 to position 40?
On its own, rarely. Both positions sit in the near-zero-CTR tail. Effort is far better spent pushing a near-page-one page (positions 8–15) onto page one, or improving pages that already rank in the top five.
How can I run this analysis on my own blog?
Open Google Search Console, set the Performance report to the last 90 days, and enable the CTR and Position columns. Then open the Page Indexing report and compare indexed versus not-indexed counts. The two reports together tell you whether your problem is ranking, indexing, or both.
Cite this page
Blogging Titan. (2026). CTR by Google Position in 2026: Case Study Data From a Real Blog. Blogging Titan. https://bloggingtitan.com/blog-seo/ctr-by-google-position-2026/
This case study uses first-party Google Search Console data from a single real WordPress blog and is published as a transparent, replicable reference. Figures are reported as rates to protect competitive data.
This is original first-party research by Blogging Titan. The dataset below is free to cite or republish with attribution under a CC BY 4.0 license.
| Position ~1.5 (top of page 1) | 12.2% CTR |
| Position ~7 (lower page 1) | ~2% CTR |
| Page 2 (~13) | ~2% CTR |
| Page 3 (~28) | ~2% CTR |
| Page 6 (~60) | 0.4% CTR |
| Site-wide average (~70) | 0.2% CTR |
Blogging Titan. (2026). CTR by Google Position in 2026: Case Study Data From a Real Blog. Retrieved from https://bloggingtitan.com/blog-seo/ctr-by-google-position-2026/
@misc{bloggingtitan2026ctr,
title = {CTR by Google Position in 2026: Case Study Data From a Real Blog},
author = {{Blogging Titan}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://bloggingtitan.com/blog-seo/ctr-by-google-position-2026/},
note = {Original first-party dataset, CC BY 4.0}
}
Written by
Blogging Titan Team
Blogging Titan is an independent team of bloggers documenting what actually grows a blog in the AI search era. We have been building, ranking, and monetizing WordPress sites since 2017, and every guide on this site is based on strategies and tools we have tested ourselves. Want a second pair of eyes on your blog? Request a free blog audit or start with the 2026 playbook.
