How three CTR trackers reported three different position-1 rates

Ask three trackers what click-through rate the Google’s number one organic result gets and you get three different answers: 27.6%, 39.8%, and no single figure at all. Backlinko ran one large-sample analysis. First Page Sage built a meta-analysis of several outside sources. Advanced Web Ranking runs a continuous, multi-industry panel that reports quarter-over-quarter shifts rather than a fixed curve. None of the three is wrong; each answers a differently framed question, and averaging them together would produce a number none of the three trackers actually measured.

Three curves, three methods#

Tracker	Data source	Sample	Reporting format	Position 1
Backlinko	Semrush-aggregated Google Search Console data	4 million search results across 1,312,881 pages and 12,166,560 queries	One-time analysis, last updated April 2025	27.6%
First Page Sage	Meta-analysis of Backlinko, Sistrix, Wordstream, BrightLocal, LocalIQ, Danny Sullivan and Search Engine Journal, plus its own internal data	Not disclosed	Published May 2025, updated December 2025	39.8%
Advanced Web Ranking	Its own Google Search Console-based panel across 22 industries	Millions of search terms and thousands of websites, international, split by desktop and mobile	Continuous since September 2015; reports quarter-over-quarter percentage-point change, not a fixed curve	Not published as one figure

First Page Sage’s curve is the only one of the three published as a full ten-position table: 39.8% at position 1, 18.7% at position 2, 10.2% at position 3, 7.2% at position 4, 5.1% at position 5, 4.4% at position 6, 3.0% at position 7, 2.1% at position 8, 1.9% at position 9 and 1.6% at position 10. Backlinko publishes position 1 and the top-three combined share, 54.4% of all clicks, without a full per-position table. Advanced Web Ranking’s tool renders an interactive curve rather than a static number, refreshed monthly since September 2015, most recently for July 2026.

Why the numbers do not agree#

They start from different data. Backlinko’s 27.6% comes from one pull of real Google Search Console accounts, aggregated through Semrush, unfiltered by SERP type: local packs, shopping carousels and other features that suppress clicks are baked into the average. First Page Sage’s 39.8% is a meta-analysis that leans on Backlinko’s own numbers among several other sources, plus First Page Sage’s undisclosed internal data, and the company’s own writeup says its figures skew toward cleaner organic SERPs with fewer competing features. A meta-analysis inherits every input study’s blind spots without disclosing which ones dominate the blend, which is most of the gap between the two.

They measure different things. Backlinko and First Page Sage each publish a static snapshot: one number per position, true as of one point in time. Advanced Web Ranking’s quarterly report does the opposite. Its Q1 2026 release compares Q1 2026 averages against Q4 2025 rather than stating a baseline figure, reporting that the first five desktop positions rose by a combined 10.54 percentage points quarter over quarter while mobile position 1 fell 2.20 points, across 22 tracked industries. A tracker built to show change cannot be read as a single comparable baseline next to trackers built to show a snapshot.

Device and vertical mix are not held constant. Advanced Web Ranking splits desktop from mobile because, in its own words, CTR runs higher on mobile at the top positions; Backlinko and First Page Sage both report a single blended figure. None of the three discloses an identical vertical mix, so a tracker weighted toward informational queries will read differently from one weighted toward commercial or local intent, even before any difference in method.

What the AI Overview breakdown adds#

None of these three baseline curves accounts for AI Overviews. For that, Ahrefs’ own study is the more useful source, and this site has already covered its headline finding that position-1 organic CTR fell 58% between December 2023 and December 2025 when an AI Overview appears; see Ahrefs: AI Overviews cut position-1 CTR by 58% for that full comparison rather than repeating it here.

The same Ahrefs report also breaks the decline down by position, a cut this site has not previously cited: -58.0% at position 1, -50.8% at position 2, -46.4% at position 3, tapering to -19.4% by position 10. Ahrefs’ own framing is blunt about what that tapering means: the impact gets “less dramatic” further down the page mostly because positions 2 through 10 already start from a low click-through rate with little room left to fall. Laid against the three baseline curves above, the AI Overview effect is large enough on its own to explain most of the spread between Backlinko’s 27.6% and First Page Sage’s 39.8%, without needing three different trackers to disagree about anything else.

Why we care#

A position-1 CTR number without its tracker attached is not a citable fact. Whether a deck says 27.6% or 39.8% for the top spot changes forecast traffic by roughly 40%, and the difference comes entirely from which tracker’s dataset and definition of “position 1” is behind the number, not from any disagreement about how Google actually behaves.

The tracker built to show change, not a snapshot, is arguably the most honest of the three. Advanced Web Ranking’s refusal to publish one fixed curve, instead reporting how CTR moved this quarter, is a harder number to misquote in a slide than a single static percentage, even though it is less convenient to cite. The two snapshot trackers are useful for a ballpark; the quarterly tracker is useful for knowing whether that ballpark is still shrinking.