Hey everyone! 🚀 I wanted to get your thoughts on a drop in CTR Y2Y for organic search that I’ve noticed in GSC. Despite having a similar number of impressions and even better positions compared to last year, our organic clicks have decreased. I’ve ruled out Google Ads as a potential cause for the decrease for a couple of reasons: 1. I’ve been consistently running Google Ads campaigns throughout the year, and while they do impact organic CTR to some extent, the current drop is more significant than what I’d expect based on my experience with these campaigns. 2. I’ve analyzed competitor budgets and found that they have remained fairly constant since last year. This indicates that the decrease in our organic CTR is not a direct result of increased ad competition within our niche. Given these observations, my current assumptions for the drop in CTR are: 1. Google increased the number of ad slots above organic results. 2. More diverse organic results types are appearing above text results (photos, questions, videos, etc.). Has anyone else experienced something like this? What other factors could be contributing to the decrease in CTR? I’m considering shifting our budget away from SEO and focusing more on paid ads, but that seems like a drastic move given our history of strong SEO. Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

@Magdalena Krzemieniewska even when looking at competitors budgets you don't get all the information. I actually compared most tools (semrush spyfu etc) to campaigns that I'm running and while they get close they always tend to underestimate your total spend Also they lag behind. Is it possible that some of your competitors have played with their descriptions? If they improved their CTR because of a better description then you might be losing traffic even if you're in a higher spot. Did you look at whether there's been an change in the tech mixup of your traffic? mobile vs web? maybe there's more mobile traffic now adn they're more likely to be clicking on the ads and the rich results at the top. Just some thoughts good luck!

Hey @Omar Sefian, thank you for your valuable input! You’re right, even though I have some insight into competitor budgets through auction analysis and impression share in Google Ads, there might be some underestimation or lag in the data from third-party tools. As for the meta titles and descriptions, we did try updating them to be more similar to our competitors’, but unfortunately, it didn’t seem to help much. We’ll continue working on improving them, though! Regarding the change in the tech mix of our traffic (mobile vs. web), I hadn’t considered that! I’ll definitely look into whether there’s been a shift towards more mobile traffic and if that’s affecting CTR. I’m not sure if GSC has specific reports for mobile/desktop differences, but I’ll explore that as well. Your suggestions have given me some great ideas to investigate further. Thanks again, Omar! Your help is much appreciated! 🙏