Google CTR Insights

Advanced Web Ranking has released its Click-Through Rate report for Q3 2025, highlighting several notable shifts in how users interact with Google’s organic results. The data compares performance from July to September against the previous quarter and draws from a broad international dataset. The findings show movement in branded searches, commercial and local queries, and the stability of longer search phrases.

Key Takeaways at a Glance

Branded searches on desktop are sending a greater share of clicks beyond the top result.
Commercial and location-based searches are becoming tougher environments for the highest organic listing.
Longer, more detailed queries continue to produce steadier clickthrough rates.

Branded Desktop Searches: Clicks Move Further Down the Page

The most noticeable activity this quarter appears in branded searches conducted on desktop devices. These queries, which include business or brand names, saw a decline in the influence of the first result. Position 1 lost 1.52 percentage points in CTR, while positions 2 to 6 gained a combined 8.71 points.

Unbranded searches, by contrast, remained largely stable. This suggests the shift is driven by how users engage with branded SERPs in particular, where they may be exploring multiple brand-related listings rather than selecting the first one.

Commercial and Local Searches: Tougher for the Top Spot

AWR’s breakdown by user intent shows that commercial and location-focused queries continue to challenge the dominance of top positions. Commercial queries — typically searches that include terms such as “price” or “buy” — saw meaningful reductions at the top of the page. Together, positions 1 and 2 fell by 4.20 points, with the first result accounting for most of the decline.

Local searches also showed weakening performance. On desktop, position 1 dropped 2.52 points, and on mobile, it fell by 2.13 points. AWR suggests that competing page features, including rich results and map modules, may be diverting attention away from traditional organic listings.

Longer Search Queries Prove More Stable

Another important trend relates to query length. Shorter multi-word searches experienced dips at the top position on desktop. Two-word queries lost 1.22 points, while three-word phrases fell by 1.24 points.

Four-plus-word queries, however, were the only group that remained steady throughout the quarter. Mobile trends showed the reverse for the shortest searches, with one-word queries gaining 1.52 points at position 1. Overall, shorter desktop searches remain the most unstable category when it comes to click performance.

Industry Movements: Vertical-Specific Shifts

The report also analysed CTR changes across 18 different industries, linking performance to wider demand trends. Arts & Entertainment experienced the sharpest decline, with position 1 on desktop dropping 5.13 points.

Travel saw the strongest positive movement, with position 2 on desktop rising by 2.46 points. Shopping results demonstrated more of a redistribution than a decline: the top spot lost 2.10 points, but positions 2 and 3 gained a combined 2.83 points. This indicates that users are spreading their clicks more evenly across high-ranking results in this sector.

Why This Matters for Site Owners and Marketers

The findings from Q3 provide useful context for anyone trying to understand traffic changes when their rankings remain the same. For branded desktop results, the top position is still powerful, but its dominance has softened. If you monitor branded terms, you may notice traffic spreading across several listings rather than concentrating at the very top.

Meanwhile, if your website relies heavily on short, high-volume desktop queries, these remain the most unpredictable in terms of CTR movement. Longer queries, which tend to be more intentional and specific, showed greater consistency and may offer more stable traffic opportunities.

Looking Ahead to Future Trends

Although AWR’s dataset is international and does not isolate specific causes behind these movements, the general direction for Q3 is clear. Branded desktop searches are shifting towards a wider distribution of clicks, and commercial and local searches continue to squeeze the top organic position.

These trends reinforce the idea that the structure of search results — and user behaviour within them — continues to evolve quarter by quarter. Businesses may need to pay closer attention to second- and third-position performance rather than relying solely on the value of ranking first.