PPC | GOOGLE ADS | PAID SEARCH | Google Desktop CTR Climbs While Mobile Dips, Report Finds
- googleadwordshero
- Jul 3
- 2 min read
Article by Matt G. Southern
Highlights
Desktop clickthrough rates rose while mobile weakened at the top, a turn from the recent direction.
The data covers one quarter and points to no cause, so it reads as a signal rather than a trend.
A device-blind view of CTR may now miss in both directions.
Desktop and mobile clickthrough rates are splitting, according to new benchmark data. Clicks are growing on desktop while declining on mobile.
Click-through rates for desktop and mobile are moving in opposite directions, according to the new data from Advanced Web Ranking.
The direction here, especially on desktop, runs counter to the recent narrative in recent CTR reporting. Organic clicks have been eroding overall as AI Overviews expanded, a pattern we’ve covered here using AWR’s data as well as figures from Ahrefs and Seer Interactive, among others. For desktop, however, Q1 data points in the other direction.
What The Data Shows
First, note that the desktop-mobile comparison uses data from AWR’s CTR tracking tool, which reflects dataset-specific movement rather than direct changes in Google’s algorithm or SERPs.
Across 22 industries, top desktop click-through rates generally increased over two quarters, while mobile declined at #1.
On desktop, gains appeared mostly below the third position, while on mobile, the #1 spot dropped by 2.20 percentage points, with little change elsewhere in the top ten.
As with many of the SERP analyses we’ve looked at, AWR also splits the data into branded and unbranded search queries, and the desktop-mobile split holds up for both, though branded desktop gains were larger overall.
Desktop branded searches gained in all top-ten positions, ranging from 1.99 to 5.78 percentage points. Mobile branded search changes were mostly minor. Unbranded queries saw a 3.07-point drop in CTR at the #1 position on mobile, while desktop positions gained.
Beyond the intent split, AWR breaks its data down into additional categories, such as keyword length and industry.
According to the report, the desktop-mobile split held broadly across the 22 industries measured, with some notable single-position swings. Within the 22 industries analyzed, the largest desktop increase was a 7.05-percentage point gain for first-ranked sites in Family & Parenting. The largest mobile decline was a 9.03-point drop for first-ranked sites in Law, Government, & Politics.
Often, AWR releases combined figures adding gains across several positions in the top ten, but those aggregated totals merely sum up the per-position changes. They don’t describe what happened to a single site. To be clear, when we talk about the first-ranked site in any position-by-position breakdown, the per-position figures actually map to specific ranking placements.
How This Fits The Recent CTR Story
A recent string of CTR data has generally pointed downward, alongside the rising prominence of AI Overviews on the SERP. Ahrefs data found a 58% drop in CTR for the position-one result on queries with an AI Overview. Seer Interactive similarly measured declines in that same range and Pew Research reported that users who saw an AI summary clicked on the “traditional” links less often.
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