What kind of queries rank in the top 3?
Mostly questions. We took every non-brand query with an average position of 3.5 or better and at least 20 impressions over 16 months: 750 queries on 9 sites. Then we labelled each by intent.
85.7% were informational: the searcher wanted to learn something. Only 5.7% were commercial or transactional, where the searcher is comparing products or ready to act. 6.3% were navigational and 2.3% too vague to call.
That mix explains most of the low CTR on its own. Easy, specific questions are where a smaller site reaches the top 3 most often, and they are also where Google is most likely to answer on the page.
Search intent of high-impression non-brand queries ranking in the top 3
- Informational85.7%
- Navigational6.3%
- Commercial or transactional5.7%
- Unclear2.3%
What is on the results page above and around you?
We searched 124 of these queries on 22 October 2026 (Google US, English) and recorded what Google showed. Every one had an AI Overview. 111 of 124 also showed a People Also Ask box and 44 showed video results.
Position 1 in Search Console is the first organic link. On these pages, the reader has usually seen a written answer and a list of follow-up questions before they reach it. When the answer is a definition, a number or a short how-to, the AI Overview often is the whole visit.
What Google showed on 124 checked top-3 results pages
How many clicks do informational top-3 queries get?
Very few. The 643 informational queries earned 670 clicks from 114,562 impressions: a CTR of 0.58%. 68% of them got no click in 16 months.
Commercial and transactional queries did not do better in this sample. The 43 we found earned a CTR of 0.22%, and 67% got no click. So a top-3 position on its own does not promise clicks for any intent here. What changes is what a low CTR means: on a how-to or definition query it usually means Google answered it, on a buying query it is worth a closer look at the page and the competition.
One more thing to know about the sample: two sites hold 97% of the informational queries. The pattern held on the results pages we checked across 7 sites, but the CTR figures lean on those two.
CTR on high-impression top-3 queries, by intent
What to do about it
Sort your top-3 queries by intent before you touch a title
Export queries with an average position of 3 or better, then label each one: a question to learn, a comparison, a purchase or a brand search. Expect most to be questions.
Intent sort for your top-3 queriesSearch Console > Performance > Queries, last 16 months Filter: Position <= 3.5, Impressions >= 20, exclude your brand name Label each query: informational = how, what, why, can, does, definitions, numbers commercial = best, vs, alternative, review, pricing, tool transactional = buy, sign up, download, template, near me navigational = a named product or siteSearch the query yourself and read the page
If an AI Overview and People Also Ask answer it before your link, a rewritten title will not change much. Make the page the source worth citing: a clear one-line answer near the top, then the detail the overview leaves out.
Measure informational pages by visibility
Track impressions, position and whether you are cited in the AI Overview. A page that holds position 1 on a question with no clicks is still putting your name in front of searchers.
Put conversion effort into action-intent pages
Pricing, comparison, template and sign-up pages are where a click turns into a customer. In this sample they did not click more by default, so check their results pages and their snippets one by one.
Check this on your own site
Murkuz connects Google Search Console, GA4 and Bing Webmaster Tools to Claude or ChatGPT, so you can ask the same questions about every site you run and get answers from your real rows. Paste any of these into the chat:
List my non-brand queries in the top 3 with 20+ impressions and zero clicks, and label each by intent.Which of my top-3 queries trigger an AI Overview right now?Compare CTR for my informational and commercial queries in positions 1 to 3.
- SEO and GEO AnalyzerCheck whether a page is built to be cited by AI answers.
- FAQ Schema GeneratorMark up the questions your page already answers.
- Murkuz MCP toolsFind results people see but do not click, across every site you run.
- Every MCP toolThe full list of questions the connector can answer, with what each one reads.
More free utilities on the tools page.
Methodology
We selected 29 sites for this analysis. Selection criteria: small and mid-sized software, SaaS, review and content sites with Google Search Console data for the whole study window. Their data is anonymized.
Queries come from Google Search Console (web search) over the last 16 months to 22 October 2026. We kept non-brand queries (no site name in the query) with an impression-weighted average position of 3.5 or better and at least 20 impressions.
Each query was labelled by search intent: informational, commercial or transactional, navigational, or unclear. CTR is pooled: total clicks divided by total impressions in the group. Zero-click share is the share of queries in the group with no clicks across the whole window.
For the results-page check we searched 124 queries on 22 October 2026 in Google US, English and recorded whether an AI Overview, People Also Ask and video results appeared. Two sites hold 97% of the informational queries.
Sites are never named or described in a way that identifies them. We only publish a comparison when each group holds at least five sites. Data snapshot: 22 October 2026.
| Finding | Sites |
|---|---|
| Top-3 queries sorted by intent | 9 |
| Informational top-3 CTR and zero-click share | 5 |
| Commercial or transactional top-3 CTR | 7 |
| Results pages checked for AI Overviews | 7 |
You can reuse the numbers, charts and infographic under CC BY 4.0: credit Murkuz and link to this page. Spotted an error? Email [email protected] and we will correct it and note the change.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my CTR low when I rank in the top 3?
Most likely the query is a question Google answers on the results page. In our data 85.7% of high-impression top-3 queries were informational, all 124 results pages we checked had an AI Overview, and informational top-3 CTR was 0.58%.
Do AI Overviews reduce clicks?
On informational queries, our data is consistent with that. Every one of the 124 top-3 results pages we checked showed an AI Overview, and 68% of informational top-3 queries got no click in 16 months.
Should I rewrite my title tags to improve a low top-3 CTR?
Only after you have searched the query. If the answer already sits in an AI Overview and People Also Ask, a new title rarely changes the result. Spend title tests on queries where the searcher has to visit a page to finish the job.
Do commercial queries get a higher CTR in the top 3?
Not in our sample. Commercial and transactional top-3 queries had a CTR of 0.22% across 43 queries on 7 sites, and 67% got no click.
What is a good CTR for position 1?
It depends far more on the query than the position. Our CTR by position study found non-brand position-1 CTR well under 1% across a selected sample of 29 sites, far below older public benchmarks. Compare your CTR with queries of the same intent rather than with an average.
About the author
Junaid K., SEO Specialist
I run SEO for 14 sites across eight products: 3,600+ published articles, 50M+ organic search impressions, and organic search as the first growth channel for every launch. Day to day that means Search Console and GA4 analysis, keyword and SERP research, content operations at scale, and catching ranking decay before it costs traffic. These articles are the notes from that work.