Free tool

SEO ROI Calculator

Estimate the revenue from moving a keyword up the search results — and the month you actually break even. Every assumption below is shown, sourced and editable, because a calculator that hides its click-through numbers is just a guess with a submit button.

Your keyword
Your economics
Your investment
Assumptions — these are estimates, not measurements

CTR figures default to Backlinko (below) and can be edited in the table. The ramp curve is our own reasoned default, not a measured dataset.

Organic click-through rate by Google position

These are the numbers driving the calculator above. They are editable — if you have your own Search Console data, use it, because your CTR depends on your SERP layout far more than on any published average.

PositionClick-through rate
127.6%
215.8%
311.0%
48.0%
56.2%
64.7%
73.8%
83.1%
92.8%
102.7%

Where these numbers come from — and what is wrong with them

Source: Backlinko — 1,312,881 pages / 12,166,560 queries (GSC data via Semrush).

The caveat we are not going to bury: this study's page carries a 2025 update date, but it does not state what year the underlying data is from — and the dataset is generally understood to predate AI Overviews. Treat it as a baseline shape, not as this month's truth. For continuously updated CTR data, Advanced Web Ranking publishes a free study refreshed monthly; we link it rather than copy it.

A single CTR curve is a simplification. Sistrix's 80-million-keyword study found position-1 CTR ranging from 13.7% to 46.9% on the same position depending on what else was on the page. An average across that range is a convenience, not a measurement.

On AI Overviews. The optional discount uses Pew Research's finding that users click an organic result 8% of the time when an AI Overview is present versus 15% when it is not — a 46% relative decline, across 68,000 queries. Worth knowing: Seer Interactive's April 2026 study (53 brands, 5.47M queries) found AI Overview click-through has since partially recovered, from 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026, and that pages cited in an overview earn about 35% more organic clicks than uncited competitors on the same result page. The collapse is real; it is not static.

One curve we deliberately do not use. The most widely quoted CTR table on the web reports 39.8% at position 1. It publishes no sample size, no date range and no primary data source, and describes itself as a meta-analysis of other people's studies. It is now being republished elsewhere as fresh research. If a calculator quotes it without saying so, you are being given a number nobody has measured.