Your real position-1 click rate is 19%, not 36%.

Pooled across 5.6 million live impressions, position 1 earns 35.7% of clicks. Split out the people who were already searching your name and it falls to 19.1% on unbranded queries (173,019 impressions, 96 sites). Every blended CTR curve, including the ones tools quote, borrows clicks from brand searches. Forecast with the unbranded number.

Unbranded position 1 earns 19.1% of clicks; the blended figure everyone benchmarks against is 35.7%. Branded queries inflate every CTR curve.
The cliff sits between positions 2 and 3: 10.3% falls to 1.6%.
Moving from position 3 to 1 multiplies clicks 22×; from 2 to 1, 3.5×.
62% of buyer questions showed an AI Overview in the week of Sep 14, up from 25% in late August.
82% of buyer-intent SERPs carry a People-Also-Ask block, mean 3.3 questions per SERP.
Position 4 out-clicks position 3 (2.1% vs 1.6%) on live SERPs. The old smooth curve is gone.

Free to cite with a link to this page · every figure detailed in the sections below · measured on 5.6M impressions across ~104 real sites

What a position is worth (all queries)

The blended curve across 5.6 million real impressions. The cliff sits between position 2 and position 3.

CTR = all clicks divided by all impressions across every site combined · at least 90 sites behind every position · Wilson 95% intervals within ±0.2pt at every position

Position 4 out-clicking position 3 (2.1% vs 1.6%) is real, not noise: AI Overviews, shopping units and People-Also-Ask interleave differently around each slot.

What to do with this

Ranking #3 is no longer “almost #1”. If a page is stuck at 3 or 4, winning the answer above the results usually beats grinding for one more position.

What a move up actually buys you

The same curve, in clicks. Per 1,000 impressions:

Position 3 → position 1

22×

16 clicks per 1,000 impressions becomes 357. The single biggest lever in search.

Position 2 → position 1

3.5×

103 clicks per 1,000 impressions becomes 357.

What to do with this

Prioritize pages sitting at position 2 or 3 on money queries. Nothing else in your backlog multiplies traffic like this.

Branded vs unbranded: the inflation, quantified

People searching your name click you three times as often. Blended curves quietly mix the two.

Branded = the query contains the site’s own brand name · positions with fewer than 15 sites on either side excluded · deeper positions publish as the branded sample grows

What to do with this

Forecast SEO work with the unbranded curve. A forecast built on the blended one borrows clicks from people who were already looking for you.

The answer box is now the norm

Before asking what an Overview costs, how often is one there? Weekly share of tracked buyer questions showing an AI Overview:

Live Google fetches · weekly n = 69 to 375 · weeks below the 25-query floor suppressed · the level, not any single week’s move, is the finding while the panel grows

What to do with this

Assume the answer box exists for your money keywords. Structure pages so the Overview can quote you (clear claims, real data, quotable sentences) instead of only chasing the blue link below it.

The crowded SERP

The answer box is not alone. What else sits between position 1 and the user:

SERPs with a People-Also-Ask block

82%

Mean 3.3 PAA questions per tracked SERP (n=828), each one a click that never reaches the results.

SERPs with ads around the AI answer

Sponsored results above or beside the Overview on ad-measured buyer queries (n=35).

What to do with this

“Position 1” is now the first slot below an answer and a question block. Judge rankings by pixels from the top, not position numbers.

Landing in October

Below our evidence floors this month; publishing the moment the data clears the bar.

CTR with vs without an AI Overview, same query, same week161 matched query-weeks and counting

Which SEO plays measurably moved clicks, pooled across the fleetmeasurement windows maturing

Indexing latency: submission to first impression32 URLs tracked, cohort too young

How to read this

Where these numbers come from. Search Console data pooled across ~104 real sites; CTR is always all clicks divided by all impressions combined, so a large site cannot be outvoted by thirty small ones. SERP facts come from live Google fetches across 12 locales.

Anything below our evidence floor is suppressed rather than published; the October section above is that honesty made visible. Methodology in full at seomatic.ai/research.

Use this data

Every number here is free to cite, quote or republish with a link to this page. Charts and the summary card may be reused with attribution. No permission needed.

Google Search Report, September 2026. SEOmatic Research. https://seomatic.ai/research/google-search

<a href="https://seomatic.ai/research/google-search"><img src="https://seomatic.ai/research/og/og-google-search.png" alt="Google Search Report, September 2026. SEOmatic Research" width="600"></a>

What are your positions actually worth?

Connect Search Console and see your real CTR curve next to this benchmark, position by position, branded and unbranded split apart.

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