Mobile converts better than desktop at the same position
Your reporting gives one CTR for the whole site, and the two halves of your audience behave nothing alike.
On 3.7 million impressions, desktop clicked at 2.47% and mobile at 4.49%, from almost the same average position: 8.87 against 8.25. Mobile was 24% of impressions and 37% of clicks. A single site-wide CTR describes neither group.
The split
Same site, same pages, same period.
| Device | Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Average position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop | 2,810,910 | 69,442 | 2.47% | 8.87 |
| Mobile | 905,159 | 40,661 | 4.49% | 8.25 |
| Tablet | 48,898 | 1,769 | 3.62% | 8.03 |
Why the gap is not what people assume
The usual explanation is that mobile results pages are shorter, so the top result takes more of the screen. That is part of it. The other part is position: mobile sat half a place higher, and half a place matters more at the top of the range than anywhere else.
What to do with your own split
Report the two separately and permanently, and judge changes within a device rather than across the blend. A site-wide CTR that moves because your mobile share moved tells you nothing about your pages.
Cite this
Mailarpawar, P. (2026). Mobile converts better than desktop at the same position. RankHonestly. Measured on 267 days of Google Search Console data. https://rankhonestly.com/case-study/mobile-vs-desktop
These figures are free to quote, republish and chart, with a link back.
Use the numbers
- Run this on your own export
- /guides/average-ctr-by-google-position
- /guides/what-is-a-good-click-through-rate-seo
More from the same dataset
- CTR by Google position, measured on one site instead of averaged across many
- Brand search was 49.3% of clicks, and converted 16 times better
The whole record
This page is one table out of it. The book is all of it, for $19 once. What is in the book, or read Chapter 20, free to read.