Link Analytics Benchmarks: What’s a Good Click-Through Rate by Channel?
Your campaign got a 2% click-through rate. Is that good?
On LinkedIn, it’s excellent. On Google search ads, it’s less than a third of average. In an SMS campaign, Klaviyo would call it critical. Same number, three opposite verdicts.
I run linkutm, a UTM and link tracking tool. Our link analytics sits at the redirect, where a click on a tracked link gets counted. So “is my CTR good?” is one of the questions I get most. Usually the person is comparing a number from one place against a benchmark built a completely different way.
Here’s the thing most CTR benchmark lists skip. Every channel divides clicks by a different denominator. Ads divide by impressions. Email divides by delivered. SMS divides by recipients. And link analytics has no denominator at all, because a redirect only sees the clicks, never the people who scrolled past.
This post gives you current 2026 benchmarks for each channel, the denominator each one uses, and a method to build your own baseline. It won’t re-teach the CTR formula. The CTR glossary entry covers that.
Link Analytics Benchmarks at a Glance: Average CTR by Channel in 2026
Here are the current published averages, the denominator behind each one, and how old the data is. Treat an average as the middle of the pack, not a target. Every figure below comes from the named source, and the data age matters as much as the number.
| Channel | Published average CTR | Denominator | Source and data age |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google search ads | 6.64% | Ad impressions | LocaliQ / WordStream, 2026 report |
| Facebook ads, traffic objective | 1.93% | Ad impressions | LocaliQ, 2026 |
| Facebook ads, leads objective | 2.70% | Ad impressions | LocaliQ, 2026 |
| LinkedIn Sponsored Content | 0.44% to 0.65% | Ad impressions | B2Linked practitioner benchmarks |
| TikTok ads | 0.5% to 1.5% (sources disagree) | Ad impressions | Third-party 2025 studies |
| Email campaigns | 2.62% | Emails delivered | Mailchimp, last updated Dec 2023 |
| SMS campaigns | 8.9% to 14.5% is “good” | Recipients | Klaviyo, US data |
| Push notifications (Android) | 2.25% | Notifications delivered | Pushwoosh, Q4 2024 to Q2 2025 |
| Organic search, position 1 | 7.1% blended | Search impressions | First Page Sage, Mar to Aug 2026 |
Two rows deserve a warning before you use them. Mailchimp hasn’t refreshed its email data since December 2023. And the organic search figure fell 82% in one year, which I’ll explain below.
Honest limitation: these are cross-industry averages. LocaliQ’s own search data runs from under 6% (legal and career services) to 12.75% (Arts and Entertainment). Your industry row matters more than the headline.
Why Can’t You Compare CTR Across Channels?
You can’t compare CTR across channels because each channel’s CTR divides by a different “seen by” number. An ad impression, a delivered email, and an SMS recipient are not the same unit. A 2% rate on one is not the same achievement as 2% on another. The denominator changes what CTR is measuring.
A denominator is the “how many had the chance to click” number that CTR divides by. Here’s how it differs by channel, and which part link analytics can actually supply.
| Channel | Numerator the benchmark uses | Denominator | Where you get the denominator |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search and social ads | Platform-counted clicks | Impressions | Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, Campaign Manager |
| Unique clickers (usually) | Delivered | Your ESP | |
| SMS | Unique clickers | Recipients | Your SMS platform |
| Push | Opens from the notification | Delivered | Your push provider |
| Organic search | Search clicks | Search impressions | Google Search Console |
| Organic social posts | Link clicks | Reach or followers (varies) | Native analytics, inconsistent |
| QR codes | Scans | None exists | Nothing counts people who walked past |
Look at the last two rows. For organic social and QR codes, there’s no agreed denominator. That’s why nobody can give you an honest “good CTR” for a QR code on a poster. Anyone quoting one invented the denominator.
Meta adds one more trap. Ads Manager shows CTR (all), which counts every interaction: reactions, profile taps, “see more” expansions. It also shows CTR (link click-through rate), which counts only clicks to your destination. The LocaliQ Facebook benchmarks are link-click benchmarks. Compare your CTR (all) against them and you’ll think you’re winning when you aren’t.
So where does link analytics fit? It gives you a clean, consistent numerator across every channel, measured the same way everywhere. You borrow the denominator from each platform. That combination is the only way to compare channels on your own terms.
Honest limitation: borrowing a denominator means trusting another platform’s counting. Platforms revise how they count impressions, often quietly, and your historical CTR shifts when they do.
What’s a Good CTR for Each Channel in 2026?
A good CTR is one that beats the average for your channel, your objective and your industry. It should hold for more than one campaign. Below is each channel with the context the headline number hides. My personal rule: I don’t call anything “good” until it has beaten the channel average for three straight months.
Paid search: 6.64% average, and it keeps rising
LocaliQ’s 2026 search advertising benchmarks put the all-industry average at 6.64%. Finance and insurance averages 9.83%. Travel averages 9.32%. Legal services sits near the bottom at 5.87%.
Search CTR is high because the person typed a query first. Intent is already there. If your search CTR is under 4%, the problem is usually keyword match types, not ad copy.
Paid social: Meta leads, LinkedIn is low by design
LocaliQ’s Facebook advertising benchmarks show traffic campaigns at 1.93% and lead campaigns at 2.70%. Both rose year on year. Beauty and personal care tops traffic CTR at 2.73%. Finance and insurance trails at 1.46%.
LinkedIn Sponsored Content averages 0.44% to 0.65%, according to B2Linked’s published benchmarks. LinkedIn doesn’t publish an official figure. A 1% LinkedIn CTR is roughly double the norm. Don’t judge it against Meta.
TikTok is where I trust benchmarks least. Published 2025 figures range from about 0.5% to 1.5%, depending on which study you read. Sources disagree on method, so I won’t pick one number for you.
Email: 2.62%, but the data is old
Mailchimp’s benchmarks give an all-industry click rate of 2.62%, calculated as clicks divided by delivered. The range runs from 1.19% (vitamin supplements) to 4.58% (government). The data was last updated in December 2023.
Use the delivered-based click rate, not click-to-open. Apple Mail Privacy Protection preloads tracking pixels, so opens are inflated. Inflated opens make click-to-open rate look worse than it is. The email click rate entry covers that metric in full.
SMS and push: the highest numbers, the smallest audiences
SMS click rates dwarf every other channel. Klaviyo’s SMS campaign benchmarks use four tiers: 14.6% and above is great, 8.9% to 14.5% is good, 6.0% to 8.8% needs work, and under 5.9% is critical. Automated SMS flows run higher still, near 10% on average with top performers above 16%.
Push is closer to email. Pushwoosh reports a 2.25% average on Android across industries, and 3.78% for ecommerce apps.
Real talk: SMS CTR is high partly because the list is small and opted-in. Don’t move email budget to SMS because 12% beats 2.6%. Compare revenue per recipient instead.
Honest limitation for this whole section: platform benchmarks come from platform customers. Klaviyo’s numbers describe Klaviyo senders, mostly ecommerce. A B2B SaaS team’s SMS won’t look like that.
Organic Search CTR Benchmarks Broke in 2025 and 2026
Organic CTR benchmarks from before 2025 no longer describe Google. AI Overviews answer the question above the results, so fewer people click. The best current data shows position 1 organic CTR is a fraction of what older studies reported. Any benchmark older than 2025 should be treated as a historical baseline.
The numbers moved fast:
- First Page Sage, in its 2026 CTR report published September 22, 2026, puts blended position 1 CTR at 7.1%. That’s down from 39.8% in its 2025 report. When no AI answer appears, position 1 gets 22.6%. When one does, it gets 3.6%.
- Advanced Web Ranking July 2026 data shows desktop position 1 at 20.02%, falling to 9.69% when an AI Overview is present.
- Seer Interactive tracked 3,119 informational queries. Organic CTR on queries with AI Overviews fell from 1.76% to 0.61%. Queries without them also fell, from 2.72% to 1.62%. Seer also found brands cited inside the AI Overview earned 35% more organic clicks.
A confession: our own CTR glossary entry still quotes Backlinko’s 2023 figure of 27.6% for position 1. That number was accurate for 2023. Today it’s a pre-AI Overviews baseline, and I’d rather tell you that here than let you plan around it.
There’s also a link analytics catch here. Google ranks your canonical URL, not your short link. So organic clicks never pass through a redirect, and link analytics can’t measure organic CTR. Your numerator and denominator both live in Google Search Console. The URL analytics for SEO guide covers how to read that data at URL level.
Honest limitation: the three studies measure different query mixes and devices. They agree on direction, not on the exact number. Use your own Search Console CTR by position, split by queries that show AI Overviews.
Why Is Your Link Analytics CTR Higher Than Your Ad Platform’s?
Your link analytics CTR usually runs higher than the platform’s because the numerators differ. A redirect counts every request to the link. That includes email security scanners, browser prefetch and repeat taps. Ad platforms and email tools filter invalid clicks or count unique clickers only. Same campaign, two honest numbers.
This is the most common version of “your CTR is wrong” that reaches our support inbox. Here’s a worked example (illustrative numbers, not customer data):
| Measure | Email platform | Link analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Delivered | 20,000 | Not visible to a redirect |
| Clicks counted | 480 unique clickers | 690 total clicks |
| CTR on 20,000 delivered | 2.40% | 3.45% |
Both numbers are correct. The email platform counts each person once. The redirect counts every request, including a security scanner opening every link before delivery. The click analytics breakdown covers the four things inflating redirect counts, so I won’t repeat them here.
The rule I follow is simple. Compare like with like. When you benchmark against a published average, use the platform’s own CTR, because that’s how the benchmark was built. Use link analytics CTR to compare your channels against each other, because it counts clicks the same way everywhere.
Honest limitation: mixing the two in one report is how teams end up “improving” CTR by switching data sources. Pick one per purpose and label it on the chart.
How to Build Your Own Link Analytics Baseline
A baseline is your own typical CTR for a channel, measured the same way over time. It beats any industry average, because it already reflects your audience, offer and list quality. Building one takes about eight campaign cycles. After that, every new number gets judged against your normal, not someone else’s.
- Tag every link with a consistent channel value. Use the same
utm_mediumfor a channel every time. The UTM builder enforces lowercase. That stops “Email” and “email” splitting into two channels. - Write down the denominator source for each channel. Impressions from Ads Manager, delivered from your ESP, recipients from your SMS tool. Never mix sources within a channel.
- Pick one numerator per purpose. Use platform clicks against published benchmarks. Use link analytics clicks for cross-channel comparisons.
- Collect at least eight periods. Eight sends, or eight weeks for always-on ads. Fewer than that and one odd campaign skews everything.
- Use the median, not the mean. One viral send can drag an average up for months. The median ignores it.
- Set a normal range and only react outside it. Take the lowest and highest of your last eight periods. A new result inside that band is noise. Outside it is a signal worth investigating.
Sample size matters more than most people think. A CTR’s margin of error shrinks as the denominator grows. At 2% CTR on 1,000 impressions, the 95% confidence range is about 1.1% to 2.9%. At 10,000 impressions it tightens to about 1.7% to 2.3%. So a “drop” from 2.4% to 1.8% on a thousand impressions might be nothing. Our free CTR calculator handles the basic math. For the margin, you need the impression count too.
The baseline also needs somewhere to live. I keep channel medians as a single block in our weekly report, which the link reporting dashboard guide lays out.
Honest limitation: a baseline drifts when the channel changes under you. Apple MPP reset email opens in 2021. AI Overviews reset organic CTR in 2025. When the platform changes, start a new baseline instead of blending old and new.
When Is a CTR Benchmark the Wrong Question?
A CTR benchmark is the wrong question when clicks aren’t the goal. Awareness campaigns, high-ticket B2B offers and retargeting all produce CTRs that look bad against averages and still make money. CTR measures how compelling the link was. It says nothing about whether the click was worth having.
Picture two campaigns. A LinkedIn campaign sits at 0.38%, under the benchmark, and books the cheapest demos of the quarter. A Meta campaign hits 4% and sends traffic that bounces straight back out. A CTR benchmark praises the wrong one.
Three situations where I’d ignore the benchmark entirely:
- Tightly targeted audiences. Small, precise audiences click less and convert more.
- Retargeting. People who’ve already visited click at very different rates, so cold-audience benchmarks don’t apply.
- Brand or video objectives. The platform optimizes for views, not clicks, and CTR falls on purpose.
When you’re below benchmark and it does matter, the next step is diagnosis, not panic. The guide on using analytics to improve campaigns walks through what high-impression, low-CTR patterns usually mean.
One more thing I’ll say as someone who sells branded links: our branded link entry cites vendor research claiming branded domains lift CTR by up to 34% to 39%. I believe the direction. I don’t treat the size as a benchmark, because it came from vendors, including companies like mine. Test it on your own audience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my link analytics CTR different from my ad platform’s CTR?
Link analytics counts every request to the redirect, including security scanners, browser prefetch and repeat taps. Ad platforms and email tools filter invalid clicks or count unique clickers once. The two use different numerators, so link analytics CTR usually runs higher. Use the platform’s CTR against published benchmarks, and link analytics CTR to compare your own channels.
Are organic CTR benchmarks from 2023 still accurate?
No. AI Overviews cut organic click-through rates sharply in 2025 and 2026. First Page Sage’s 2026 report puts blended position 1 CTR at 7.1%, down from 39.8% a year earlier. Position 1 gets 22.6% without an AI answer and 3.6% with one. Treat figures like Backlinko’s 2023 27.6% as pre-AI Overviews history.
What is a good click rate for SMS campaigns?
Klaviyo’s US benchmarks rate an SMS campaign click rate of 14.6% or higher as great, 8.9% to 14.5% as good, 6.0% to 8.8% as needing improvement, and under 5.9% as critical. Automated SMS flows average close to 10%, with top performers above 16%. Those figures come mostly from ecommerce senders.
How many impressions do I need before comparing CTR to a benchmark?
Aim for several thousand impressions or delivered messages per period. At 2% CTR on 1,000 impressions, the 95% confidence range runs from about 1.1% to 2.9%. That is too wide to judge. At 10,000 impressions it narrows to about 1.7% to 2.3%, which is precise enough to compare against a channel average.
Do branded short links improve click-through rate?
Vendor studies, mostly from link-shortening companies, report CTR lifts of up to 34% to 39% for branded domains over generic shorteners. The direction is plausible because a recognizable domain builds trust. The size is a vendor claim, not an independent benchmark. Test it by sending the same message with only the link domain changed.
Can link analytics calculate CTR without impressions data?
Not on its own. A redirect only sees the people who clicked, never the people who saw the link and scrolled past. Link analytics supplies a consistent click count, the numerator. You borrow the denominator from each platform: impressions from ad managers, delivered from your email tool, and recipients from your SMS platform.
Start With One Channel’s Baseline This Week
Link analytics benchmarks only mean something when the numerator and denominator match how the benchmark was built. Here’s the short version:
- Search ads average 6.64%, Meta traffic 1.93%, LinkedIn about 0.5%, email 2.62%, and SMS is “good” from 8.9%.
- Organic search benchmarks older than 2025 are history. Position 1 now averages 7.1% blended.
- Link analytics CTR runs higher than platform CTR because redirects count every request.
- Your own median beats any industry average once you have eight periods of data.
Pick your biggest channel today. Pull eight periods of clicks and the matching denominator, then write down the median and the range. That one line becomes the benchmark you actually trust.
If you want the click side measured the same way across every channel, linkutm’s link analytics shows clicks by channel, source and device next to your GA4 campaign data. Tag your next campaign with the free plan and your baseline starts with the first send.
